Comment by onionisafruit
9 hours ago
That’s interesting. For the rest of us I guess it’s just the law if large numbers that our air conditioners don’t cycle off at the same time
9 hours ago
That’s interesting. For the rest of us I guess it’s just the law if large numbers that our air conditioners don’t cycle off at the same time
Pretty much. Except the law of large numbers breaks down in correlated events.
Like a black out.
What really hurts is are all the rotating machines, especially the one-phase ones (fridge, AC, blower). Those have transients that last several cycles and are electrical shorts until the back emf is setup.
Utilities will try to roll the power back on in sections to avoid instability, starting with hospitals and those near hydro plants.
But you can help put by turning off your stuff during the blackout and when the light come back on walking around the house to turn them back on.
In the UK we have that scenario with people turning on kettles during breaks in TV programs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
With the obligatory, must see, BBC Britain from Above segment in which Andrew Marr fly on the wall narrates the most challenging part of a live load engineer (UK)'s day ... <doof, doof, doof> the East Enders kettle break.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slDAvewWfrA