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Electrical outage but no trips evident!!


CeeJay
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Woke up this morning to find that the bedside clock had reset itself which indicated that the power had gone down at some point. Also noticed that the clocks on the oven and microwave had also reset.

Checked the switches on the fuseboard and everything was alright, none of the switches were down, also checked the main EDF feed in and that too was alright.

The mystery is why there was a power outage but with nothing to show there was. Is it possible for EDF to cut off the power for some reason which would have triggered the main in switch (?) and then it switched itself back on when normal service resumed?

I have checked all other appliances and there is no problem now.
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No mystery a power down and reset would not normally cause any of your ID's or the DD to trip unless there was an overvoltage power surge when the current was re-established.

 

When a short transformer is overloaded it will trip and automatically try to réenclencher some 30 seconds or so after, also there are often micro-coupures lasting a fraction of a second which will reset all the digital clocks but all you might be aware of is the lights dimming.

 

In my house at the UK it happens so frequently that I stopped resetting digital clocks some 25 years ago, the longest I ever went without doing it was 9 days. 

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Its a regular occurrence here in Manche. Day or night it does not matter. Its actually useful sometimes as a forewarning of an incoming storm. Tree branches banging against the power lines was a big problem until they started putting the lines under ground. Both house computers run off UPS boxes to avoid problems. The only bother is having to unplug the SFR box and reset it after even a v short micro-coupures. Running it off an UPS doesn't seem to help.
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For clocks the easiest way around the problem of having to reset them is to either buy ones linked to an atomic clock - in the case of France the one in Germany or clocks with battery backup. For kitchen appliances you will just have to keep resetting them.
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I run two UPS from APC. One for the computer and peripherals, and a smaller one for the livebox and telepone. It functions very well on two levels. Maintaining service during cuts, mainly mini cuts some times 3-5 in an hour. And stabilising the supply to an optimum level seems to help the pc perform more serenely. JFB

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I'm in a rural area. I now have six APC UPS for computers, printers, routers, satellite boxes, amplifiers, etc. I only used to have them on computers and peripherals but satellite boxes was "blow" for an unknown reason - even occasionally when we were away and they were powered off but not unplugged. That has now been solved with an UPS. But the power is, in general, more stable and reliable since they replaced the transformer in the village a few years ago.

We have a Neff oven and a Neff microwave/oven. The oven clock is very sensitive goes off at the slightest sneeze - so short the UPS don't report it as an event; but the microwave is OK.
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Thanks for the replies. I have now discovered that APC is a brand of UPS - but a search on Amazon comes up with a vast array of possibilities of widely differing costs and complexities. Which model would be best for a satellite box, wifi router and a couple of laptops?
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Tinabee. It depends on how much equipment you want to attach. The key is the watts per hr taken. You need to intrnet that for each piece of equip and that will give you the ups power you need.. But broadly routers such as live boxes do not take very much and you are not looking to run off the ups all day, just cover on/offs. For that mine is i think 200w.

PCs and monitors draw more power, and you probably want to work on and shut down in an orderly manner so should allow at least 30 min battery back up. I have a 400w APC for the pc and monitor.

My APCs came with 8 sockets, 4 linked to the battery and 4 not. the latter just benefit from stabler power supply. So on my computer system APC I have critical things like the PC and the monitor on the battery sockets and the printer on the other sockets. Apc also have rj sockets so you can pass through the incoming phone/adsl thro them to give some protection in thunderstorms.

For what they cost they are wiorth it. But be aware the batteries, like car batteries have a limited life. But we are talking years here.

Hopes that helps. JFB

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If you are running the laptops with their batteries in and plugged into the mains, then you do not need an APC/UPS as the battery in the machine acts just the same.

If you want one to run the laptops after their batteries have run out, then that is a different matter.
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