The mystery of electricity – or “when wall-sockets attack”
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The other night the power went off at my parent’s house, which I was in for the night. This didn’t turn out to be the vanilla power outage where your electricity flickers off and on again, no this one created poltergeist-like effects.
So, the short story is that the power went out 4 in the morning, nothing odd with that – it happens. Then one hour later, at 5 o’clock the power flickers on and then goes off again. A couple of minutes later the power comes on again, but something doesn’t seem right. I check the lights, and they are shining presumably weaker. I try to go online, as my dsl-modem with attached Linksys access point should have automagically went online – no go. I check the dsl-modem and it looks to be dead. (I swear silently for myself, thinking that I have to get a new modem = more hazzle.)
Seconds later I hear a loud humming noise coming out from the speakers next to the office area. Hmm, I start to think to myself (beside hearing sounds “from the other side”) that something must be messed up with the quality of electricity coming in to the house, and I quickly pull out all electronics, fridges and other appliances that might be in danger. (One of the freezers was standing and clicking on it’s own, and I was actually expecting Pinhead and his cenobites to enter at any moment.)
Next step was to see what actually is coming out of the sockets in the wall, and what do you know?! The voltage is ~110V instead of the regular ~230V as is standard.
During me lounging around, my dad wakes up (the most alert 70 year old you’ll see – ever) and we start to check the fuses inside the house – where-as all are functioning. In order to find the fault source, we go outside to the main fuse box to and both check the fuses there – all are alright.
The natural next step is to see what kind of voltage there are on the phases. *woopsie* Only 1 phase out of 3 are working and the one that is working shows half of what it should, yes you guessed right; 110V.
As we have gone through all the steps at the local facilities, we then call the energy company, where a perky young lady answers (my not so perky) father in the other end that she will notify the electrician on call. (I was trying to hide my laughter hearing him grunting newly awake 
) A couple of minutes later, the electrician calls up my father and they discuss the problem. Knowing the area, my father tells the workers what has been sources of error in the past and awaits their arrival.
When this is done, I go to sleep as I know that there is not much I can do by then. (The time is now around 6.30 in the morning.)
I wake up a couple of hours later, and find out that the error was quite a transient one. A “line fault”, for sure, but that was only a partial cable-break to a cable that was running under the creek close to my parents’ house. This partial error was transient in nature, to the degree that it didn’t go completely off and the broken cable served as a giant resistor. Thus, the low voltage levels and malfunctioning phases at the end-point of the consumer’s facility – aka, the border fuse box.
When awake, I put on the DSL-modem again; It worked just fine. It was just a cheap (OEM) ac-adapter that only handled ~230V. The Linksys access point worked like a charm however, as this ac-adapter could take both ~110V and ~230V.
Lesson to be learned from all of this; Never take electricity for granted – it is actually quite a complex process to manufacture and bring into your home. (Plus of course to watch out for Pinhead when opening the freezer 
)
Until the next time… keep your fingers out of the sockets.
