European clocks lose six minutes after dispute saps power from electricity grid

Europeans who have been arriving late to work or school in recent weeks have more than just the bad weather to blame. The real reason is an unprecedented lag in the continent’s electricity grid that is causing some clocks to run too slowly.

The problem is caused by a political dispute between Serbia and Kosovo that is sapping a small amount of energy from the local grid, causing a domino effect across Europe’s 25-nation synchronized high voltage power network spanning the continent from Portugal to Poland and Greece to Germany.

The European power grid lobby group urged the two Balkan countries to resolve the dispute.

“Since the European system is interconnected ... when there is an imbalance somewhere the frequency slightly drops,” said Claire Camus, a spokeswoman for the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E).

The continental network had lost 113GWh of energy since mid-January because Kosovo had been using more electricity than it generates. Serbia, which is responsible for balancing Kosovo’s grid, had failed to do so, ENTSO-E said.

The Brussels-based organisation added that “this average frequency deviation, that has never happened in any similar way in the Continental European power system, must cease”.

The deviation from Europe’s standard 50Hz frequency has been enough to cause electric clocks that keep time by the power system’s frequency, rather than built-in quartz crystals, to fall behind by about six minutes since mid-January.

The problem mostly affects radio alarms, oven clocks or clocks used to program heating systems.

ENTSO-E said it was working on a technical solution that could bring the system back to normal within “a few weeks”, but urged European authorities and national governments to address the political problem at the heart of the issue.

Source: theguardian