Power Observations
Jul. 13th, 2021 12:25 pmI have some anecdotal experience with the changes in the power grid over the course of a day here.
I mentioned in an earlier post that we bought a free-standing AC unit for our computer room in advance of the upcoming, prolonged heatwave. It's not super-efficient, but it does the job. Right now we have the window blocked with cardboard, but we're going to replace that with some insulated foam board this weekend.
When we were running it yesterday afternoon, every time its compressor kicked on, the AVR circuit in![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
atara's UPS tripped. After the first couple of times that it happened, I fired up the monitoring software on my own UPS to see what was up.
Our house voltage was oscillating between 113 and 115 volts, but when the AC compressor started, our voltage would drop to about 100 volts before quickly climbing back up to about 110-111.
So far this morning it has been hovering at 117 volts, creeping down to 115 before climbing back up. I imagine that will change as more people start running their ACs later in the day.
When we fired up the AC for a few minutes this morning to tame the computer room a bit, her UPS did not flinch, and the voltage didn't budge. The difference was that we didn't have the whole neighbourhood watching television with their ACs running.
It was a reminder that our power grid is a bit more volatile, and perhaps even fragile than we think sometimes.
I mentioned in an earlier post that we bought a free-standing AC unit for our computer room in advance of the upcoming, prolonged heatwave. It's not super-efficient, but it does the job. Right now we have the window blocked with cardboard, but we're going to replace that with some insulated foam board this weekend.
When we were running it yesterday afternoon, every time its compressor kicked on, the AVR circuit in
atara's UPS tripped. After the first couple of times that it happened, I fired up the monitoring software on my own UPS to see what was up.Our house voltage was oscillating between 113 and 115 volts, but when the AC compressor started, our voltage would drop to about 100 volts before quickly climbing back up to about 110-111.
So far this morning it has been hovering at 117 volts, creeping down to 115 before climbing back up. I imagine that will change as more people start running their ACs later in the day.
When we fired up the AC for a few minutes this morning to tame the computer room a bit, her UPS did not flinch, and the voltage didn't budge. The difference was that we didn't have the whole neighbourhood watching television with their ACs running.
It was a reminder that our power grid is a bit more volatile, and perhaps even fragile than we think sometimes.
