Saturday, September 10, 2011

Smart Grid might make you late

The Federal Government has mandated (years and years ago) that all US electrical power run on average (over 24hours) at 60Hz.  This has been useful for clocks to keep time. This seems to be a bit (by multiple factors) of a cost challenge when building out smarter, and more robust power systems through out the country. 

So the thought is to test the effects of phasing out the strict 60Hz rule which The North American Electric Reliability Corp, who manages the countries electrical power systems, will be doing. 

Results to your oven clock (per year):
  • East Coast: +20 min/year
  • West Coast: +8 min/year
  • Texas: +2 min/year
  • Quebec: 0 min/year
(also see AP article on this topic.)

1 comment:

Andrew Gallo said...

there's also this movement:
The Future of Time: UTC and the Leap Second

Decoupling civil and scientific time. What does this mean in the long run?