Power Quality Discussion

What is Power Quality?
To many of our customers power quality is the number of blinks or flickers experienced which result in the need to reset electronic clocks. Edison Sault Electric Company understands that these blinks are an inconvenience to our customers, and we are reviewing our system for ways to reduce the number of blinks on our power supply system.

What causes blinks and flickers in power?
Blinks and flickers have many causes.  Some of these causes are within the home while others are related to the utility’s power supply system.  A refrigerator, dishwasher or other household motor starting can cause flickering lights. This is particularly true if the house wiring is not the right size, if there are loose connections, or if there are bad ground connections in the house.

Outside of the house, blinks are caused by momentary faults on the power system.  These momentary faults may be trees, squirrels, or other things contacting electric lines or equipment and shorting the power to ground.  These problems have always occurred on power systems throughout the country, however, prior to digital clocks and other electronic devices went mainly unnoticed.

Power systems are designed to limit the duration of an outage and the size of the area effected by using breakers inside substations and reclosers and fuses out on the lines to isolate faults.  The breakers and reclosers are designed to open when they sense trouble on the power system and stop the flow of power.  Both devices close after a very short time and restore power.  If the fault is no longer there, the breaker or recloser remains closed and power is restored with no outage.  If the fault is still sensed, the device opens up again.  The open/close operation can occur up to three times after which a fuse will blow or the recloser/breaker remains open and shuts off the power until the cause of the fault can be located and repaired.  The result is the ‘blinking’ of the lights experienced by our customers.

The alternative to the blinks is to have the breaker or recloser open and not let it close again.  The result of this would be a power outage until repair crews arrive and restore power.   Edison Sault Electric Company has chosen to use reclosers and breakers to clear momentary faults thus eliminating many prolonged power outages. This trade off causes our customers to see more blinks/flickers instead of experiencing a complete power outage.

How can you help?
One way that customers can reduce the need to reset electronic equipment is to, when necessary, purchase new equipment that contains a backup power source.  Many manufacturers are now making electronic equipment with battery or other supply to provide temporary backup power, which prevents the electronic equipment from losing power during momentary outages and having to be reset.  We recommend that when purchasing new electronic equipment, ask if it contains a backup power source.

To contact Customer Service, send mail to this link.

Send mail to this link with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: September 13, 2007