How reliable is your mains power supply?

[KennyR]

Well, how reliable is it where you are? I just wondered how good the mains (or "utility") power supplies around the world are. How often do you get surges/drops/outages, and how long do they last? Anyone ever lost hardware to a serious surge spike? Are thunderstorms a time for you to turn off all your stuff?

I'd also love to know what kind of protection against power problems you all have as well. Do you have:

· expensive surge protectors/supressors like this;

· the lower grade power-strip surge protectors/supressors like this;

· a UPS (such as this);

· no surge protection at all?

[QuikSanz]

Hmm, well I live in southern California, umm typicaly power is steady @ 117VAC @ 60Hz, however our governor has made some bad contracts and has chosen not to approve new power plants. Every so often now we may have rotating blackouts in summer. I only have a power strip type. power has only been lost once with computer on, I switched off my Miggy right then to make sure if it came on "dirty" I was less likely to blow something.
So far , so good.

Chris

[Ilwrath]

Well, from Detroit Michigan, (We have DTE Energy) and I wouldn't consider running a computer without an APC/UPS.  Lots of "Brown outs" and the occasional spike.  Plus the transformer down the block from my apartment has blown out several times over the past couple years I've lived here.  Not pretty stuff.  The average light bulb only lives a few months here.

Heck, I even have my TV and TiVo on a small APC, like this.
(The computers are all on larger APCs like your first link)

[asian1]

Hello
In my country, the electric utility company is a government owned monopoly with very poor service. I only get 900W! The company refuse to provide supply to poor people (450W) because they cann't find the correct meter. To get additional power rating (ie 1300 W), you must wait for several years and pay huge bribes!

Last night I got 3 hour blackout and the voltage often dropped to 170V (from 220V!)
I had destroyed at least a dozen Power Supply (PC Power & Cooling) and 3 UPS (APC) in the past 10 years. The only reliable stabilizer is APC Line-R power conditioner.

TV, Refrigerator, Washing machine and other electric appliances often destroyed by low voltage and poor lightning protection. The Electric contractor use poor quality grounding, because of corruption.

The power generation capacity is 18 thousand MW, unfortunately 6 thousand MW is broken, damge or under repair. The total consumption during peak hour approx. 13 MW. Therefore there are several rolling blackout everyday. The plan to build new power generators are cancelled after the financial crisis (1997). Now the foreign contractors are suing the government and power company in International court.

They plan to provide Internet through electric grid later this year, but I doubt about the quality and the speed.

[Casper]

I live in the city and here all power cables are buried underground so power is very reliable. We basically never have blackouts, the few ones we have are usually because of planned maintenance in the middle of the night (we get a letter in the mail stating when it will be well in advance). That maybe happens once a year. There are no spikes or surges at all and no brownouts. I heard on TV that the cities are well protected because the power companies install their own surge protectors here to protect their own gear and the customers kind of get it for free because of this.

My parents live about 15km (10 miles) outside of Gothenburg and their reliability is a bit worse because the main power lines  are carried in the air on poles to the area were they live. So they can get  blackouts and brownouts (if they loose just one phase of three) and spikes during heavy thunderstorms and under heavy snowfall (trees fall on the powerlines).

They've never lost anything electrical because of the power during the 25 years they've lived there though, although two 2400 baud modems were destroyed due to spikes on the phone lines during thunderstorms when I was younger and lived at home.

[Casper]

@asian1

In my country, the electric utility company is a government owned monopoly with very poor service. I only get 900W! The company refuse to provide supply to poor people (450W) because they cann't find the correct meter. To get additional power rating (ie 1300 W), you must wait for several years and pay huge bribes!

Sounds really bad.  900W isn't much at all, my microwave alone  is at 1500W.

Where do you live?

[Floid]

Wow, so what country is that?

Here in CT, CL&P and NU do a pretty good job lately.  I have no idea how much juice comes from Millstone or Indian Point; when I was in the southwestern portion of the state, some of it probably came from Candlewood Lake, though barring rainfall, that only acts as a storage battery.  There's always a crunch during heat waves, but it's never been a big deal to turn the thermostat warmer and shut off a few more lights than normal - I've never seen a brownout in the towns I've been in.  The big storm last winter brought the longest outage I've sat through since the last one in.. 1987? or 88?, and where I was, it only lasted a day.  (HV lines normally come in three redundant sets; if I remember,   two snapped from the ice, in rapid enough succession that the automatic switchover burned out something not easily replaced at the generating end of the third.)

Otherwise... the biggest threat is our drivers; storms give you about a 1:10 chance of having your block knocked out by someone smashing a pole.  Following that would be lightning; we had a strike near us, once, and I lost a machine hooked to a supressor (apparently by entry through the phone line) -- since then, I haven't really bothered with supressors, since most of the designs can't handle that level of surge anyway, you rarely know if they're offering a proper level of protection (most 'power strips' seem to offer breakers without even MOVs), and a blown machine is an excuse to upgrade.

If I ever did anything serious, I'd hope to be in an environment with a proper, industrial grade supressor installed at the panel (most office buildings seem to have installed them, now), backups taken regularly on removable media, and/or a proper UPS (which basically have to have a good grade of protection simply to prevent blowing up the batteries) or *real* supressor, not whatever Belkin can charge a $30 markup on while staying "competetive."

These guys used to (and probably still do) advertise in Nuts and Volts, since around the dawn of the home computing era.  Not cheap, and I assume the install-at-panel devices are probably as good and more cost effective, but you can't beat their attitude.  If I had something like a Lorraine prototype to protect, that sort of thing might be worth it.

[Ni72ous]

Most likely that my power is not very good, i live on a little island called Sheppey, everything is old and nothing gets updated we are like second rate customers, some parts of the island aint even got a mains gas supply or sewers.

[Iggy_Drougge]

I live in a student flat built in the sixties, and due to the low rank of us dwellers, they've never bothered to earth the power supply. That bothers me a bit. There is also a total of 4 (yes, four) power outlets in the flat, which means that I have to use an ever-growing chain of "splice outlets" (what the hell do you call those bars in English?), currently I'm at 5 pieces of six outlet bars, and one 10-outlet one, in order to drive all my computers. Still, I only suffer one power failure a year, and the electricity is free (or rather, split up between all residents and baked into the rent, which eases my load and makes my neighbours poorer ;-).
As for my stay in Japan, which is nearing its end, the power supply of the student residence is absolutely abysmal. I have experienced several brown-outs in the course of one year, and with only four 100V outlets, I can't drive anything. With a refridgerator, a TV+video and my A4000, that's about all it can handle without actually needing to worry about blowing a fuse. To add insult to injury, the Japanese power system is at an 1800s level. In the summer, when everyone wants to run their air conditioners at full throttle, the power plants are so overloaded that there are latrge campaigns to urge people to leave work at high noon, or at least suffer without the air conditioning.
Then we have the actual power outlets. Earthed sockets are an unheard of luxury here, and the sockets are of the little American type. Really small sockets, with flat pins, which just hang onto the wall by the friction of these pins, which just aren't up to the job. Mere gravity is constantly threatening to pull out the sockets, since they aren't docked into the wall like European ones.
And then we have the funny situation where parts of Japan uses 50 Hz, and other parts 60 Hz for their power supply.
Makes my power supply at home seem like that of some kind of high sexurity data centre.

[KennyR]

Thanks for your interesting replies, people.

Here, about 30km from Glasgow, power cuts are very rare, spikes are almost unheard of. Maybe we could get a cut that lasts about about an hour every year, and little cutouts less than a second every few months (especially during thunderstorms). The washing machine downstairs also likes to blow the MCBs and cut off power occassionally, bah. The mains voltage stays at around 237-248 V.

I have a UPS. So far its only saved my computers from crashing on the little drops about 4 times in 2 years, but I'm happy with it. Didn't really need it, but its a sort of geek thing. ;-) Before that I had one of the dedicated surge protectors, which now protects my family's PC against non-existent surges. Oh well... ;-)

[asian1]

>Japan

There is a plan for rolling blackout this summer in Japan.
The cause: Stupid TEPCO (Japanese power company) directors create fake nuclear reactor inspection documents. As a result the government had shutdown several large nuclear reactors. Perhaps they see the fake document on the movie "Chinese Syndrome"
I guess Japan don't want to repeat the same mistake as Chernobyl and Three Miles Island.

Japan Blackout

In Asia, there will be major crisis in 2004/2005, because the region had recovered from the crisis and start the expansion again. After 1986 revolution, most investors cancell their power generator project in Philipines. A nuclear reactor project was mothballed.

In Malaysia, the crisis started on 1996, because the corruption involving top government officials, son of Prime Minister and his friends. In Indonesia, the crisis start after the value of currency plunge 75% and corruption on "price fixing" and power generator projects.
The state owned company is forced to hike the price every 3 months to cover the "fixed price". In China, because of rapid growth of Industry, wealth and population will face energy crisis in 2005. Most household begin to buy AC, refrigerator, TV etc. In Auckland, NZ, there was an energy crisis (1996?) because of broken power transmission cable. The old power company had installed low quality cable (corruption).

I use 450 Watt solar powered generator to ease the energy shortage. I also use the heat generated by AC for water heater. Every major office / factory have their own generators.


 

[mikeymike]

The problem is with buying kit that act as preventative measures, most of the time you don't know if they've just saved whatever you were trying to protect.

I had a power supply go bang once as a result of a power spike, I've used relatively decent (read: a little more expensive than the average price ones) surge protect 4/6-ways since then.

I had one surge protect 6-way go bang when a power surge > 30 amps blew the 6-way and a fuse in the house's fuse box, no equipment I was trying to protect was damaged though.  I think it was the result of the fuse in the fuse box being too old and not tripping immediately that caused a surge way too large for the 6-way to handle.

[Gaidheal]

I live in the UK as well and just the other week got myself a 6 way surge protected socket board.  It's one the ones with the TV aerial and telephone sockets on as well, not that I use those on it.

We almost never have any blackouts at all.  Quite often we manage to trip the ELCB and it also has a nasty habit of going if a light bulb blows (grrr!).  Used to trip when the freezer cut in, too, but we sorted that (it's a bit sensitive, which is actually good).

I got the board because I needed two more plugs, not for the protection :¬)  But that extra layer is a bonus.. it just ough to make sure that fuses go well before my hardware, just as it did for Mike.

[KennyR]

Actually, I just noticed there is a controversy raging over the use of surge protectors. Some people say they're no use, because in half-decent electric systems there should be at least 4 different failsafes between you and the surge. Other people say that the low grade ones aren't good enough to cut out a surge before it breaks your stuff. Might be interesting (but expensive) project to investigate.

Then again, I heard a story about a town in Scotland where everyone in one street had all of their stuff frazzled by a freak unexplained surge.

Well, whatever - I still feel safe with a UPS and high grade one protecting my computer stuff, and a lower grade one protecting my TV and DVD player. And it means I don't have to worry during storms. :-)

[Linchpin]

I connect my miggy through a belkin spike protecter, its one with a £10000 guarentee i think.. not sure of the amount.

My Pee Cee however,

well i just plug that into the mains hahah

Kev