Hi Well ok, the rest of the story ….
The process of watching the line voltage slip lead me to buy my first “frequency counter”. It was a 1950’s vintage tube based Beckman “EPUT Meter”. I doubt it cost me over $40 at the time. It was well used but still functional It clocked away on a massive MHz time base (that’s singular not plural) and turned out to be plenty good enough to show jitter on a 60 Hz sine wave. That got me into questions about why and stability and …. here I am decades later. Bob > On Apr 5, 2017, at 7:57 PM, Jeremy Nichols <[email protected]> wrote: > > A fun way to monitor the state of the grid is to watch the web site of > the Power > Information Technology Laboratory <http://powerit.utk.edu> at the University > of Tennessee <http://www.utk.edu>, Their site lists in both tabular and > graphical (map) form the frequency of the grid. Most of it is USA-based but > there are a few other countries also monitored. > > I have one of the monitors (in the table display page < > http://fnetpublic.utk.edu/tabledisplay.html> my monitor is #853 in the > Western Interconnection—I'm in California). > > The monitors, about the size of a thick hardback book, plug into a > convenient AC line outlet, connect to your Internet router, and have a > small puck-style GPS antenna so that it knows the time and where it is. The > unit has an LCD display of date, time, line voltage, and line frequency. > The voltage is shown to 3 decimal digits of resolution and the frequency to > four digits. > > I got my monitor from the U of T after I sent them a report on my home-made > monitor's results. It's interesting to watch the frequency wander up and > down but always average very close to 60.000 Hz. They saw I had an interest > and offered me one of their toys. The only thing it doesn't do is connect > to my PC so I can monitor it long-term. I suppose if I were clever with > network stuff there'd be a way to tap into its data stream. > > Jeremy, N6WFO > > > On Wed, Apr 5, 2017 at 2:12 PM, Bob kb8tq <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi >> >> Back in high school, one of the radio club members figured out that the >> “clock adjustment” took place >> locally between 4:30 and 5:00 PM. Needless to say, pretty much everybody >> spent the next week listening >> to WWV and watching the clock’s second hand go out of sync with the beeps. >> This was back in the late 1960’s >> and the idea of a grid was a bit looser than it is today. Indeed it was >> post 1964 so there *were* grids big >> enough to take out the whole north east section of the US. Since we were >> very much in that area the >> topic of grid sync came up. Nobody ever really had a good answer to that >> question. That included the >> guys who ran the local power company. >> >> Bob >> >>> On Apr 5, 2017, at 3:05 PM, Hal Murray <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> >>> [email protected] said: >>>> When I installed power plants in the 1970's they has a special "clock" >> that >>>> showed the cumulative error in terms of clock time. >>> >>> How big were the grids back then? >>> >>> What was the typical range of error over a day or month? >>> >>> >>>> If the generator ran a little too fast the clock would move forward. >> As >>>> the operator observed the clock moving away from zero he would reduce >> the >>>> plant's power and the clock would move backward toward zero. ... >>> >>> Does that operator control a single generator or a whole grid? >>> >>> Does having a human in the loop help the control loop stability? >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> These are my opinions. I hate spam. >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] >>> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/ >> mailman/listinfo/time-nuts >>> and follow the instructions there. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] >> To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/ >> mailman/listinfo/time-nuts >> and follow the instructions there. >> > _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
