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Power outage puzzle
On Friday, following the east coast trend, my neighborhood got an outage too.
First all was dark, then a half hour later it came back.
Well, almost. The microwave would work, but the stove just beneath wouldn't.
The drier would work, but the washer beneath wouldn't.
One wall outlet would have juice, and the next outlet 6 feet away wouldn't!
I checked and flipped all the fuses on the electrical panel. Same schizo deal.
I thought I was hallucinating!
I was ready to call the electrician when some gears slowly clicked in my head... tri-phase electricity comes on 3 wires. Power hungry devices use the three 110volt phases to get 330 volts and do their job, while small appliances only pick 2 wires and get 110 volts.
The power company had restored only 2 phases, and the third one was down. So any appliance connected between the 2 hot wires would work, and all the rest wouldn't.
An hour later the 3rd phase came back on and everything started working.
First time this kind of partial phase outage ever happens to me. [img]/images/graemlins/freak3.gif[/img]
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