# Why your mains powered clock is running 6 minutes slow



## qubit (Mar 10, 2018)

It's all to do with the mains frequency being 49.996Hz and not 50Hz. Get your nerd on and check it out. 

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/electrica...low-thanks-missing-electricity-141147945.html

EDIT: please stay away from the political stuff. See @Norton's post below.

ANOTHER EDIT: here's a better link to this story: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/09/europeans_losing_minutes_smm_fingered


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## CAPSLOCKSTUCK (Mar 10, 2018)

6 minutes over what period of time? the article doesnt make it clear. 

If its 6 minutes over a week it would be annoying but if its a million years who cares apart from yahoo


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## basco (Mar 10, 2018)

quote\  A ‘dip’ in electrical power in the region has had an impact on the national power grids of 25 countries in the Continental European Power System \ quote

wow that show´s how fragil this system is-awaiting the next big sunbursts


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## lZKoce (Mar 10, 2018)

Yeah, I heard about this one on the news. The reason is Kosovo/ Serbia. The disbalance spreads from there to the whole network. The problem is political, not so much technical. Very interesting thing though, I didn't know about the electrical networks being connected. The frequency drop by itself is insignificant, but the period the network has stayed this way - that's what is worrying. It's the first time this has ever happened.

@basco what it has to do with sunbursts? It's about Kosovo using more energy than it can produce and Serbia not wanting to "lend" some to balance the area.


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## basco (Mar 10, 2018)

serbia is the only one who can lend some energie to kosovo?

quote from you:
Very interesting thing though, I didn't know about the electrical networks being connected.

so if sunbursts(sorry i meant solar flares) go into one it fries down all of the network?


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## Norton (Mar 10, 2018)

meh...

Not too many clocks are powered by an AC synchronous electric motor these days (chart recorders are though).

Ready to lock this thread up if it devolves into a geopolitical discussion


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## Ferrum Master (Mar 10, 2018)

they all have compensation circuit for that... even the soviet clocks did have that.

EDIT.

It seems I've missed special cut down versions, i've better use a pole and and sun than those without quartz.


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## basco (Mar 10, 2018)

sorry but this seems like precrime from minority report


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## Aquinus (Mar 10, 2018)

Aren't most RTCs driven by crystal oscillators these days? That would be independent of mains frequency. The article sounds more political than scientific.


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## qubit (Mar 10, 2018)

Norton said:


> Ready to lock this thread up if it devolves into a geopolitical discussion


Everyone:  please keep it to the technical nerdy stuff, peeps. I don't want mod action in this thread.

I've got just such a mains locked alarm clock. Got it in the late 90s with a beautiful big red 2" LED display. You have to set it manually of course, but after that it just doesn't drift. Ever. Like a radio controlled clock. It's because the mains frequency itself is syncronized to the atomic clock. Kinda weird and awesome at the same time.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 10, 2018)

Norton said:


> Not too many clocks are powered by an AC synchronous electric motor these days (chart recorders are though).



Yeah, pretty much what I thought too.  I know around me the only places I see AC driven clocks are government buildings and schools.  Pretty much everything residential has gone digital with crystals.

But it could be different in other countries.


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 10, 2018)

It really doesn't matter though because all internet-connected devices sync to time servers at least once a week.  Just have to adjust all of the ones that aren't.


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## RejZoR (Mar 10, 2018)

Mains powered clocks are the ones on microwaves, ovens, stand alone stoves and mains powered alarm clocks with radio (with glowing numbers). All these devices use mains frequency as timing oscilator and not a quartz crystal oscilator.

@FordGT90Concept 
Windows is connected and has capability to use internet time, but it's a miserable failure. Just open atomic clock on time.is and be amazed how off your time is... I have to use alternate time service to sync all my computers, otherwise they drift off by up to 6-7 minutes because microsoft's NTP service is garbage and hasn't worked right for literally decades now.


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 10, 2018)

2 whole seconds.  Not worried about it.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 10, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> Windows is connected and has capability to use internet time, but it's a miserable failure. Just open atomic clock on time.is and be amazed how off your time is... I have to use alternate time service to sync all my computers, otherwise they drift off by up to 6-7 minutes because microsoft's NTP service is garbage and hasn't worked right for literally decades now.



The ability itself isn't a failure, the problem is the Microsoft ran server that it tries to sync to is constantly overloaded.   That's why they built the ability to use the alternate government one right in.  Switching to sync to the government time server is one of the first things I do.


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## RejZoR (Mar 10, 2018)

The ability out of the box is non existent. I mean, if you offer the feature, buy some damn servers for it. It has been overloaded for what, 15, 20 years? It's stupid.


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## dorsetknob (Mar 10, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> Windows is connected and has capability to use internet time, but it's a miserable failure. Just open atomic clock on time.is and be amazed how off your time is... I have to use alternate time service to sync all my computers, otherwise they drift off by up to 6-7 minutes because microsoft's NTP service is garbage and hasn't worked right for literally decades now.


One of the "Services " i always disable


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 10, 2018)

I changed the time server to my literal server and now it's <0.1 second off.  Because my server is a domain controller/time server, it naturally syncs to internet time more frequently.  On top of that, syncing to it will never fail because it's never that busy.


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## 95Viper (Mar 10, 2018)

Latest info:

Deviations affecting frequency in Continental Europe have ceased; ENTSO-E working on step 2



> ENTSO-E has now confirmed with the Serbian and Kosovar TSOs, respectively EMS and KOSTT, that the deviations which affected the average frequency in the synchronous area of Continental Europe have ceased.
> This is a first step in the resolution of the issue. The second step is now to develop a plan for returning the missing energy to the system and putting the situation back to normal. Register to ENTSO-E news alerts for updates.
> ENTSO-E, in close interaction with the European Commission, is trying to identify a sustainable long term solution that will avoid that this happens again.
> The situation experienced is unprecedented in the Continental European Power System. The European transmission system operators interact constantly, across the borders and through ENTSO-E, to ensure that security of supply is maintained in one of the world's largest synchronous area.



Some more interesting data:

National grid UK (check out real-time data links on this page)



> *System Data*
> 
> 
> Demand:                33735 MW
> ...





> Data last updated on : 10/03/2018 13:44:00


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## qubit (Mar 11, 2018)

newtekie1 said:


> Yeah, pretty much what I thought too.  I know around me the only places I see AC driven clocks are government buildings and schools.  Pretty much everything residential has gone digital with crystals.
> 
> But it could be different in other countries.


Note that my alarm clock that I was talking about was built in the late 90s. If it was made today, it might use a crystal; I really have no idea.

btw, I remember that back in the day, around 1997 when I bought it, the time did drift on it, so clearly at some point after that, the mains frequency was synced to an atomic clock. I don't know why they run it quite so accurately, either. I wouldn't have thought a few millihertz difference would matter for devices. Perhaps it has something to do with syncing generators when they come online, but still it's not critical.



FordGT90Concept said:


> I changed the time server to my literal server and now it's <0.1 second off.  Because my server is a domain controller/time server, it naturally syncs to internet time more frequently.  On top of that, syncing to it will never fail because it's never that busy.


I remember when I was teaching myself Active Directory a few years ago, the AD server deliberately didn't sync over the internet to improve security. It had to be enabled in Group Policy somewhere, although I never did figure out where the setting was. I was using Server 2008, ie the server version of Vista. Maybe you're using a later version and the default behaviour has changed?


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 11, 2018)

Pretty sure enabling the Active Directory role also enables W32Time.  I just checked and it was running syncing off of time.windows.com.  While I was in there, I changed it to time.nist.gov:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...n-authoritative-time-server-in-windows-server

I'll have to check in a few days because NtpServer doesn't broadcast that it updated.


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## newtekie1 (Mar 11, 2018)

RejZoR said:


> The ability out of the box is non existent. I mean, if you offer the feature, buy some damn servers for it. It has been overloaded for what, 15, 20 years? It's stupid.



The ability out of the box is built right in.  It defaults to using Microsoft's time server(which haven't been overloaded and have worked fine for a good couple years now), or they already include the national time server built in as an option as well as an alternative if you want to switch to that.  It isn't like the national time servers aren't overloaded at times too.


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 11, 2018)

time.nist.gov does a round-robin of requests so they recommend people use that.  time.windows.com likely does too for that matter.  That said, I tried using time.windows.com before switching to my server and it failed to sync.  Windows still gets overloaded frequently, it seems.

The difference between an NtpServer (e.g. Windows Server) and NtpClient (e.g. Windows) is that NtpServer will keep trying until it gets it because it presumably has NtpClients connecting to it for domain time.  NtpClient, on failure, often just waits until the next scheduled sync.


When I changed to time.nist.gov earlier today, it was 0.6 seconds off.  Now it's 0.3 seconds off.  time.windows.com was <0.1 seconds off.  Beginning to think time.windows.com is more accurate than time.nist.gov.


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## RejZoR (Mar 11, 2018)

They are using atomic clocks. They are all equally accurate. It's how much your computer goes off in between syncs...


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 11, 2018)

I dont care about an additional service running for this. If WUD doesnt throw a fit about the time or date I dont care


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## cucker tarlson (Mar 11, 2018)

I just read  the whole thread twice, and I don't understand a single word.


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## lexluthermiester (Mar 12, 2018)

cucker tarlson said:


> I just read  the whole thread twice, and I don't understand a single word.


This is because some users apparently got into very political discussions and some comments were deleted. Thus the disjointed remaining comments..


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## eidairaman1 (Mar 12, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> This is because some users apparently got into very political discussions and some comments were deleted. Thus the disjointed remaining comments..



Yup politics is no bueno here. Aka keep opinions to ones' self about them lol.


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## RejZoR (Mar 12, 2018)

cucker tarlson said:


> I just read  the whole thread twice, and I don't understand a single word.



You need to first understand that every watch needs an oscilator to keep pace (accurate time). Mechanical watches use swinging balance wheel, modern quartz watches use quartz crystal which under specific current starts to oscilate at very accurate pace and there are mains clocks that don't have either, instead they use the oscilation of the mains power to keep time. Mains power oscilates at specific rate, 50Hz for Europe, 60Hz for US. If this rate is the same, you effectively have an externally delivered oscilator. Problem is, if oscilator is not keeping its pace, the clock will become more and more inaccurate as time passes. In case of mains, it was not 50Hz anymore due to high load, instead it was running at 49,98Hz. It may not sound like much, but it's less than 50Hz which means over time, clock will lose time and started lagging behind actual time. If mains was running above 50Hz, the clocks would be faster, running ahead of actual time.

Understandable enough?


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## Divide Overflow (Mar 12, 2018)

My main's clock is keeping time perfectly well, thanks.


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## bug (Mar 12, 2018)

Norton said:


> meh...
> 
> Not too many clocks are powered by an AC synchronous electric motor these days (chart recorders are though).
> 
> Ready to lock this thread up if it devolves into a geopolitical discussion


Yeah, when I read this news I actually looked around my house only to find none of my clocks have been running late...


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## Tatty_One (Mar 12, 2018)

lexluthermiester said:


> This is because some users apparently got into very political discussions and some comments were deleted. Thus the disjointed remaining comments..


No posts have been deleted.


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## qubit (Mar 12, 2018)

@Tatty_One Could you please unlock my OP as I need to edit it. I've already clicked Report a while back, but my request wasn't actioned.


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## Tatty_One (Mar 12, 2018)

qubit said:


> @Tatty_One Could you please unlock my OP as I need to edit it. I've already clicked Report a while back, but my request wasn't actioned.


Just drinking my coffee at work, enjoying the peace for the first time in a while..... don't spoil it!


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## qubit (Mar 12, 2018)

Tatty_One said:


> Just drinking my coffee at work, enjoying the peace for the first time in a while..... don't spoil it!


haha! No rush, T.


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## Mindweaver (Mar 12, 2018)

I remember years ago a company I started working for had an old Employee punch-in time clock at the main employee door that I would have to fix the time every month.. because whenever they ran the facility on their main generator (_think hospital Generator size_) the clock would run less than 60hz which would in turn cause the time to be off over time. Once I figured out the issue was caused by the generator I put a UPS on it.


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## Tatty_One (Mar 12, 2018)

qubit said:


> haha! No rush, T.


It's done.


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## qubit (Mar 12, 2018)

Thanks T, I've added a second link to this story in my OP now.


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## dorsetknob (Mar 12, 2018)

basco said:


> so if sunbursts(sorry i meant solar flares) go into one it fries down all of the network?



IF your interested some further Reading here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859

AND in the AGE we LIVE in its VERY RELEVENT


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## FordGT90Concept (Mar 12, 2018)

6 seconds ahead (time.windows.com direct)
0.1 seconds ahead (server via time.windows.com)
0.6 seconds ahead (server via time.nist.gov)
0.3 seconds ahead (server)
0.5 seconds ahead (server)

Okay, I give up.


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## qubit (Mar 12, 2018)

I guess they all tend to _average_ to the correct time, lol.


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## lexluthermiester (Mar 12, 2018)

dorsetknob said:


> IF your interested some further Reading here
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859
> 
> AND in the AGE we LIVE in its VERY RELEVENT


Something like that hit's today, the planet will be back in the 1800's.


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## Norton (Mar 12, 2018)

FordGT90Concept said:


> 6 seconds ahead (time.windows.com direct)
> 0.1 seconds ahead (server via time.windows.com)
> 0.6 seconds ahead (server via time.nist.gov)
> 0.3 seconds ahead (server)
> ...


_Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future _










Sorry, had to do it 



Mindweaver said:


> I remember years ago a company I started working for had an old Employee punch-in time clock at the main employee door that I would have to fix the time every month.. because whenever they ran the facility on their main generator (_think hospital Generator size_) the clock would run less than 60hz which would in turn cause the time to be off over time. Once I figured out the issue was caused by the generator I put a UPS on it.


Generators have caused all kinds of problems with chart recorders at my job sites because of this. Thankfully PLC's and other controllers aren't usually affected by this too much.


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