random electrical surges in house possible solar flare?

reply to post by kdog1982


this only happened tonight, no other day, and its not just me that had issues with power, like 2,000 + people have no power atm. I just got lucky and mine stayed on. Thats why I am trying to figure out what happened, cause it clearly isn't weather related. If it was someone that bumped into a pole then my power would be out as well. So I am thinking it is something to do with miltary testing.

reply to post by zonetripper2065

You forgot reptilian.

reply to post by neobludragon

If it was someone that bumped into a pole then my power would be out as well.

That depends. There are different feeder circuits. If you are on a different circuit from someone else you could have power when they don't.

Here's a thought....call the electric company.

reply to post by Phage


True how silly of me. Does Cheney count

I'm starting to think that North Korea has started they're attack on the east coast .

reply to post by kdog1982


dang it Kim!

Originally posted by neobludragon
I live in Raleigh and my electric flickered like 3 times in a row like 10 mins ago and no one was using any extensive electric of any sort so i was wondering if maybe it was a sunspot or something else maybe. Can anyone give me any details? I don't think it was anyone knocking down an electric pole cause then my electric would be out completely right now.

My question is why are you posting such things on here? Really? These things happen all the time. Just the other night we lost power for a short while and I only noticed because my laptop started beeping because of its crappy battery life. Then the power returned....whoop dee doo!!

Kratos

I work in IT and if you have every read the BOFH you know what I am talking about.

We blame Sunspots on everything...

Originally posted by abeverage
I work in IT and if you have every read the BOFH you know what I am talking about.

We blame Sunspots on everything...

That is always an easy way out.
I use squirrels as an excuse.

I had something similar 2 weeks ago, i live in Australia though.

I was sitting here as i do, it wasn't raining.. but had been raining on and off (strange rain.. from that little burst we had 2 weeks back.) at about 12ish midday i felt a thump or air pressure, my light went dim, wasn't enough of a surge to reboot the PC but enough to almost fully dim a 45W desk lamp. and more suspiciously It took my wireless mouse out. The Mouse is fine now, I went straight for an old fixed cable one but was reluctant to try the mouse again for a few days. I had run through all the possible fixes, but it wasn't communicating at all on the bandwidth it uses. As i said, it's totally fine now.

The one thing i really did notice, is that i noticed the air change.. the cables and lines out here are old and having a blackout or brownout during even a light wind is common. this.. was something else entirely.

I'm going to go with some freak weather thing, charged air or something. There was also an added bonus of a grass *feature* like some crazy mini crop circle in the grass outside my window, looked like a mini whirlywind landed there for a second.. i don't know.. Grass wasn't flat it was.. well it had a circular flow to the *indent* And it wasn't there before the thump, as i had had a conversation about "gee.. need to mow that" at about 11am.. it's well mowed now.

Probably some strange ball lightning thing, caught up in a mini whirlywind.. barley missing the wall in which i sit.. fun times

Somewhere nearby, there was an overload on a line. The breakers will cycle three times about 10 seconds off to try to clear the fault. You saw the load being thrown onto and off of your branch.

Dude. Just call your power company. Definitely not the strangest thing ever. Seriously. I'm not being a dick, I'm speaking from a good deal of experience. Mine flicker at least once a week (small city with lots of aging transmission lines, old transformers, etc) It's typically due to crap touching the lines, wind, effects of the salty sea air environment, etc.
Also, when one area loses their power, it's load gets shunted around to the rest try to pick up the slack to keep it on. The result is flickers or surges, this according to the guys that worked on our lines in the neighborhood last summer. Doesn't your power company's website have a section explaining any electrical issues? Want the link to mine? They're admittedly vague, but helpful Q & A's.

You can read on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's website their daily "Event Reports".

Maybe a nuclear reactor tripped an Emergency shutdown requiring some radiated steam to be released to the atmosphere to get the rods cooled down quickly. Nations with nuclear reactors built "HAARP" systems to push up on the atmosphere and steer those radiated emissions away from cities / areas with high populations.

They are causing the sudden atmospheric winds people have noticed / sudden pressure changes. The HAARP transmissions pushing up the ionosphere also bounces off that ionosphere and microwaves come back down to Earth.....causing effects like odd electrical activities.

Freezers and refrigerator sales are going through the roof....seems to really effect them.

Do you have one of those new WireLess Power Meters from your Electric Company? A certain signal at a certain frequency could effect those wireless meters causing it to want to turn off power to your home....

Also since you live on the East Coast, do you live next to a US Navy MEGAPULSE Radio array? The big radio arrays they set up to pulse a signal through the Earth to transmit UltraLow Frequencies to submarines? They send pulses through the wiring of your homes.

If you live near one you will notice some NEAT effects. Aluminum in the home becomes magnetized....compasses will point at the aluminum. As the radio array constantly pushes out its signal it's magnetizing things. Aluminum constantly receiving a signal gets magnetized. It's pretty neat.

Originally posted by kdog1982

Originally posted by abeverage
I work in IT and if you have every read the BOFH you know what I am talking about.

We blame Sunspots on everything...

That is always an easy way out.
I use squirrels as an excuse.

We tried that, but the building maintenance set up traps and never caught any and they started to get suspicious...
Blame solar flares and you can show them NASA sites until their eyes glaze over and they go into an Alpha state. They will buy you that new UPS or new server and storage array (cause it actually didn't short out you just re purposed it as a WOW server...)

Trust me the Sun is a boogieman to electronics

When theres a power problem such as someone digs up a line or hits a pole with a car etc both ends should trip and at that point it takes a moment for the other lines to take up the slack, now 3 such things in a short time probably says someone working on a problem so they need to turn off the power to be able to work on the problem, then perhaps do something and a quick test to see it works and then if everythings ok tidy up and then switch everything back to normal

And you don't want to be messing with those 100kv transformers unless you need to or fancy a quick trip to the next life

and as any good BOFH knows 3 phase is the only guaranteed way to reduce helldesk calls

If the damage to a powerline is severe enough, a fault can allow a large amount of electric current to flow through the lines. High Plains Power has installed protective devices on our powerlines, called OCR's (oil circuit reclosers, sometimes called breakers) and fused cutouts (fuses) that detect these fault currents. When the fault current exceeds a certain limit, the fuse in a fused cutout will blow and disconnect a section of line. An OCR reacts to a fault by beginning a series of internal switching operations. It opens and closes a switch, as many as three times, testing to see if the fault has cleared itself. On the fourth operation, if the fault is still there, the OCR will remain open and disconnect the line segment. In either case, a line crew will have to repair the damaged powerline and then refuse the cutout or close the OCR to restore electric service.

Linky

Three times. That's the stock behavior of power line breakers. When you see blinks in groups of three, there's a short or near short on a line somewhere on your branch.

For example a recloser may have 2 or 3 "fast" reclose operations with a few seconds delay, then a longer delay and one reclose; if the last attempt is not successful, the recloser will lock out and require human intervention to reset. If the fault is a permanent fault (downed wires, tree branches lying on the wires, etc.) the autorecloser will exhaust its pre-programmed attempts to re-energize the line and remain tripped off until manually commanded to try again.

Link

reply to post by Pervius


Wow, that's a smorgasbord of wrong. So, in general, no, that's not the way things work.

reply to post by neobludragon

If there are no local outages, it could be the transformer for your immediate area is surging or having problems.
We had that happen...and about 6-8 houses had problems.

Good idea to have surge protectors on all sensitive electronics.
Computers, TVs, frig, furnace.....cheaper to replace the protector than the appliance.

reply to post by DontTreadOnMe


And at least three - eight to ten foot long copper weld ground rods all connected together with at least number 4 AWG solid copper grounding wire. I have found that one ground rod right under my meter base was just not enough.

When lightening used to run in on my household electrical system, the high extraneous voltage would snap across several outlets and would take out electronic devices that I hadn't unplugged. Now, I'm not having that problem.

Grounding Rods, McMaster Carr
www.mcmaster.com...-and-grounding-equipment/=ltjkoq

reply to post by neobludragon


Check your breaker....and stop playing your video games 24-7! hahah