Mike Raiford <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote:
> Frequency shouldn't vary much.

  AFAIK, while the voltage can vary quite some (like eg. the stated 10%),
they are extremely careful to have the frequency as accurate as possible.
And we are talking about very tiny fractions of a hertz here.

  If I'm not mistaken, this is so severely imposed that an electric company
feeding the system with even the tiniest discrepance in the frequency or
phase is automatically dropped. I think it has something to do with energy
loss when two sources produce alternate current not exactly in sync. The
only way to avoid energy loss because of desynced AC current is to have
all sources exactly at the same frequency and phase.

  Thus a wall socket is a really accurate and reliable 50 Hz timer.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message