On 06/25/2011 08:06 AM, William Herrin wrote:
On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 10:49 AM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
Perhaps I read the piece incorrectly, but it certainly sounded to *me* like the part that was hard was not hitting 60.00, but *staying in sync with others*...
Way I read it, when they occasionally run at 59.9hz for a few hours (and according to my UPS monitoring software this is a regular occurance), they're no longer going to run at 60.1 hz for a while so that the average comes out to 60.
Regards, Bill Herrin
This paper describes what they currently do to keep clocks accurate with Manual Time Error Correction (which is what they are going to suspect for a year): http://www.naesb.org/pdf2/weq_bklet_011505_tec_mc.pdf As I said in my last post, I'm not an EE, but just follow some of topics on that side of the house. What I gather is that Manual TEC, which is done by purposely running the frequency away from 60Hz to correct an average deviation, can actually cause more problems. "NERC is investigating the possibility of eliminating Time Error Corrections. NERC has been collecting data regarding Interconnection frequency performance, including the number of clock-‐ minutes during which actual frequency dropped below the low Frequency Trigger Limit (FTL) of 59.95 Hertz. During the period of July 2005 through March 2010, approximately 44% of the minutes during which clock-‐minute actual frequency dropped below the low FTL occurred during Time Error Corrections when scheduled frequency was 59.98 Hertz (1,875 of the 4,234 total minutes observed below 59.95 Hertz). Upon further investigation, it was found that almost all of those minutes (1,819 of the 1,875 total) represented frequency deviations that would likely not have dropped frequency below 59.95 Hertz if the scheduled frequency had been 60 Hertz. In other words, approximately 97% of the Low FTLs were of such a magnitude that if the Time Error Correction had not been in effect, the exceedance of the low FTL would not have occurred. These Frequency Trigger Limits in and of themselves are only indicators of system behavior, but the nature of their relationship to Time Error Corrections calls into question the potential impact that Time Error Corrections can have on frequency behavior overall. While it is intuitively obvious that any frequency offset that moves target frequency away from the reference point to which all other frequency sensitive devices (such as relays) have been indexed will have a potential impact on those devices’ performance, the industry has by and large regarded Time Error Corrections as harmless and necessary as part of the service it provides to its customers. However, in light of this data, NERC’s stakeholders are now questioning whether or not the intentional movement closer to (or in some cases, further away from) the trigger settings of frequency-‐based protection devices as is evidenced during Time Error Correction events is appropriate. Accordingly, NERC is planning a Field Trial during which the practice of doing Time Error Corrections will be suspended. Because of the fundamental nature of this 60Hz signal, NERC is reaching out to various industries to get their thoughts on whether they anticipate any problems with the elimination of Time Error Corrections. Those industries include appliance manufacturers, software companies, chemical manufacturers, companies that make automation equipment, computer manufacturers, and many others." Source: http://www.wecc.biz/library/Lists/Announcements/Attachments/9/June%2014%20Ti... The main point I gather is that trying to do manual Time Error Correction actually makes the power grid less stable at times, and as such they want to do away with it (thus making the power grid more stable). Think of it the same as patch management risk assessment. If there are no security or bug fixes that directly affect you or even feature enhancements that you don't need, do you apply a patch/upgrade to critical systems? Nah, you skip those, because we all know every patch/upgrade carries with it risk of an unknown bug or even security flaw. That's what they're doing here, opting to skip "patching" the time error. They're not ignoring frequency altogether, but rather only minding that aspects that have to do with grid stability, not your alarm clock. This is for the better anyway, and NTP/GPS/WWV/WWVH is the way to go to keep clocks accurate and hopefully will be the outcome of any consumer complaints. I've seen conversation in various forums and lists I read that they are going to ignore or not care about the 60Hz standard. This is incorrect. They just aren't going to purposely deviate from the scheduled frequency to perform manual TEC. Mind you, that they still care about why the frequency is off, and when things are not able to quickly compensate, they want to know and be able to pinpoint it and fix it: http://www.nerc.com/filez/standards/Frequency_Response.html Specifically, read this PDF: http://www.nerc.com/docs/oc/rfwg/NERC%20Balancing%20and%20Frequency%20Contro... The AP piece was focused on hype and word-spinning (I couldn't find an AP.org link, so used one that I could find, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/24/clock-problems-power-grid-clock-dis... ): "The experiment would allow more frequency variation than it does now — without corrections." The NERC BAL standards already hold the NERC entities to very high frequency standards, and this will be unchanged, except for manual TEC. All it is doing is eliminating the corrections made purely for time's sake, which actually eliminates more frequency variation. This may, or may not, create more average frequency variation, and that is part of this test. "Officials say they want to try it to make the power supply more reliable, save money and reduce what may be needless effort." This is the real goal, and should have been the focus of the news story - but that doesn't make headlines. I'm going to go shop for a new clock. I had one that used the WWV/WWVH stations, but then they messed with DST and it was off for a few weeks around each DS change. That forced me me to pull it off the wall and change the TZ at one time of the year to correct it, but the other time of the year I could not correct it (as it only had 4 TZ settings), so I took it down. Beware "Automatic Time Set" clocks which don't really learn the time from the WWV/WWVH stations (like the Sony ICF-C218, which has a preset time and battery, but still uses the frequency from the wall to maintain time). The best bet is a clock that requires batteries as you know it won't get time from the power grid. Jason Roysdon