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Techies try to bypass damaged UPS, send 380V into air traffic system

phuzz Silver badge
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A couple of weeks ago in Bristol, National Grid somehow ended up raising the mains voltage to 266V. Incredibly, basically everything was fine and kept on working as normal.

We only noticed because the UPS feeding our comms rack was cheap and just passed on the 266V to the transfer switch. The transfer switch decided that 266 was too high and just turned off, so we only noticed when we lost internet access. The other UPS's coped just fine and conditioned the power, one recorded the initial spike at 272V! (Frequency didn't seem to drift any more than it usually does over a day).

If you'd asked me before, I'd have assumed that most consumer equipment would start to die past 260V, but everything from desktop computers to lightbulbs just shrugged it off.

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