Wierd power issue last night

kane

kane

Dedicated elf
Joined
Dec 23, 2010
Messages
1,033
Location
Trigg (Northern suburbs of Perth)
Hey All
Might have been a one-off, but had a wierd thing happen last night, so just thought I'd see if anyone could make sense of it.

I have 240v timers to turn my power supplies on at around 6:45, ready for the show to kick in at 7:15 or so (via the LSP scheduler) Last night, the power supplies kicked in fine, but when the LSP Scheduler kicked in, there was a flash of the lights, and then power to the whole house was shut off for about one second. Wierdly, no RCDs were tripped (I have about 8 power circuits and 6 light circuits, each with their own RCDs), so everything just came back on. All that was needed was a boot up of my PC to get the show up and running again.

It's obviously possible that it was a coincidence that it happened right when the lights started, but sounds a bit suss to me.

Could it be my dodgy chinese power supplies?

Cheers
Kane
 
Kane i have never had that issue myself. Sounds like a sudden power surge.

Edit:just re read post lol

I know sometimes when the scheduler kicked in for me last year there was a quick flash of all lights then straight back off. Then the show started
 
Sounds like a coincidence. I would have thought the power supplies would draw their maximum (inrush) current at switch on, not when the show started.
 
Sounds like a classic case of too many lights and drawing too much from the grid mr griswald ;)

But seriously did any of the neighbours suffer the same power outage or was it just your place. Could have just been perfect timing when the power dropped off in the grid for a second
 
I'm with David. The inrush is massively high during the initial turn on (compared with running) with the power supplies and with transformers so I'd expect any blips to occur then. If it's occurring at 7:15 when the show started then i'd be expecting that it's a short somewhere and you're causing a brown out. Sounds like now is a good time to get the problem sorted though.
 
AAH said:
I'm with David. The inrush is massively high during the initial turn on (compared with running) with the power supplies and with transformers so I'd expect any blips to occur then. If it's occurring at 7:15 when the show started then i'd be expecting that it's a short somewhere and you're causing a brown out. Sounds like now is a good time to get the problem sorted though.
Click to expand...
Thanks all - will stick with coincidence for now, until it happens again!

If it's a short on any of my light wiring, I'd think that will trip the fuses I've put on every supply line (and/or the fuses on the controllers themselves)

And a short in one of the power supplies should kick the RCD on the power circuit they are hooked up to?
 
Kane said:
And a short in one of the power supplies should kick the RCD on the power circuit they are hooked up to?
Click to expand...

It should trip the circuit breaker part. I assume they are MCB/RCD combo breakers.
 
Are your lights controlled by any sort of home automation ie C-Bus. As I've had similar problems with brownouts when the mains voltage drops bellow 200v. If this happened last night that may have been the cause as "A Hot Day + Air Conditioning = Low Power"
 
Steve22537 said:
Are your lights controlled by any sort of home automation ie C-Bus. As I've had similar problems with brownouts when the mains voltage drops bellow 200v. If this happened last night that may have been the cause as "A Hot Day + Air Conditioning = Low Power"
Click to expand...
Nah, I didn't go for C-Bus...
It hasn't happened since, so will be interesting to see if it does happen again
Cheers
Kane
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top