Dear Folks,

Have you ever wondered why grid-related power outages are extremely rare during evening hours, while PEA workers are asleep?

Yet, they happen all the time while these PEA workers are awake and ON-THE-JOB?

Ever wondered about THIS?

Just an innocent question...and....

Can you, or anyone, provide a good and logical explanation?

Please feel free to chime-in with your thoughts.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Gamma

NOTE: By evening hours, we mean about 7:00pm to 5:30am, in case we need to quantify this further.

Seems like a loaded question.

All the power outages we encounter in Bangkok occur during power storms when a transformer blows - usually once or twice per year for brief intervals.

12 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

usually once or twice per year for brief intervals.

If what you say is true, then you are not really experienced enough to contribute to this discussion, unless you might do some research concerning what happens in the hinterlands, outside BKK.

Or, would you say: BKK is Thailand?

1 hour ago, GammaGlobulin said:

If what you say is true, then you are not really experienced enough to contribute to this discussion, unless you might do some research concerning what happens in the hinterlands, outside BKK.

Or, would you say: BKK is Thailand?

Its impossible to underestimate you - I should have known better than to post in one of your threads.

32 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Its impossible to underestimate you - I should have known better than to post in one of your threads.

All intelligent comments are most welcome here.

Less demand

I actually had 4 PEA employees come to my house last month, after I called them, letting them know, once again, the power goes off almost every day for a few seconds, and almost every week for a couple of hours, both abnormal occurrences.

While I have been calling the last 8 years about this, they finally send people to my house trying to explain things. The outages usually happen during the day, but sometimes after midnight, with no wind, rain or storms.

I told them, as I have before, that back in the states, the power might go off 3 times a year, usually during storms, and that the amount of times it happens here wasn't normal. There were many trees hitting power lines here, as they do most everywhere, and that does have the power go out but they had been cutting trees from the closest town, where the PEA business is, all the way past my house as far as their system provides electricity. This slowed down the amount of times the power went out a little bit, but didn't stop them.

I explained to them it wasn't just the trees, but the grid had problems, along with the transformers, lines and breakers, which were very old. They told me I was right, that they were still waiting for funds to fix the whole system, that it was coming soon. According to other friends here, this isn't happening but a few times a year where they live, so I knew it was the local one that was the problem.It happened yesterday, while Windows was installing an update. Luckily it re-started once the computer rebooted.

I wonder more about why they never completely clear the vines and trees that tangle the electric cables and cause many of those outages. They cut the vines and tree branches, but never clear them, leaving a perfect route for them to climb up again.

Nowadays, most of our blackouts are 8 hour ones, caused by maintenance. Much more frequent are the three or four hour brownouts.

6 hours ago, GammaGlobulin said:

Dear Folks,

Have you ever wondered why grid-related power outages are extremely rare during evening hours, while PEA workers are asleep?

NOTE: By evening hours, we mean about 7:00pm to 5:30am, in case we need to quantify this further.

Last 3 brown/black outs at my house have been between the hours of 7pm and midnight.

5 minutes ago, Ralf001 said:

Last 3 brown/black outs at my house have been between the hours of 7pm and midnight.

An outlier data point.

But, anyway, thank you for sharing.

Air conditioning. In south Europe could happen the same during the hottest days.

Most daytime outages in Thailand are planned maintenance by the Provincial Electricity Authority (PEA), not unexpected failures. Crews shut power during daylight because it’s safer to work on poles and lines, faults are easier to locate, and it avoids sending workers out at night. Utilities also try to avoid scheduled cuts in the evening when household demand is highest. When power goes out at night it’s usually an unplanned fault (storm damage, equipment failure, vehicles hitting poles, etc.) and those tend to be fixed quickly, so fewer people notice them.

34 minutes ago, GammaGlobulin said:

An outlier data point.

But, anyway, thank you for sharing.

my whole soi goes out.... that would be 10's of thousands of data points.

we have regular outages, several of a night but not as many as when we lived in the other house in town, mainly consist of cars hitting poles, falling trees or people wiring into the power lines themselves, planned outages are usually known through mail drops. Over all outage times are usually not very long, a couple of hours at most but usually under an hour, planned ones are from 9am till 4pm.

Ah, the wonders of mains grid electricity and the occasional outage. Consider yourselfs lucky! I'm off to Myanmar on Saturday and amongst the items in my luggage that I always take is this assembly:

The supply of mains grid electricity in Myanmar has been hugely insufficient for yonks, and daily power outages are the norm. In rural locations, (where I'm heading), generators are in short supply, or the hotel can't afford the diesel fuel. So if one really needs a supply of 'the juice', one has to improvise.

I teach online every evening for about 3 hours, and my laptop battery won't be able to provide power for that length of time, including powering 3 separate mobile phones and an LED light array clipped to my laptop.

The 3 mobile phones are used to ensure internet stability - Wi-fi from the hotel and SIMs from 3 different mobile networks, all connected together using Speedify software. If the preferred internet sources goes 'down' or too slow, the software will automatically share or switch to a working network in an instant, without dropping the connection.

What's not shown, (because I buy this locally), is a sturdy 12 volt car battery that is charged up by that lethal-looking battery charger when there is mains grid power available. A fully-charged car battery can supplly my laptop with enough juice for perhaps 24 hours or more. I 'abandon' the battery on my return by plane, since transporting car batteries isn't permitted, (and it's too heavy for me to lug around anyway!).

14 minutes ago, simon43 said:

Ah, the wonders of mains grid electricity and the occasional outage. Consider yourselfs lucky! I'm off to Myanmar on Saturday and amongst the items in my luggage that I always take is this assembly:

The supply of mains grid electricity in Myanmar has been hugely insufficient for yonks, and daily power outages are the norm. In rural locations, (where I'm heading), generators are in short supply, or the hotel can't afford the diesel fuel. So if one really needs a supply of 'the juice', one has to improvise.

I teach online every evening for about 3 hours, and my laptop battery won't be able to provide power for that length of time, including powering 3 separate mobile phones and an LED light array clipped to my laptop.

The 3 mobile phones are used to ensure internet stability - Wi-fi from the hotel and SIMs from 3 different mobile networks, all connected together using Speedify software. If the preferred internet sources goes 'down' or too slow, the software will automatically share or switch to a working network in an instant, without dropping the connection.

What's not shown, (because I buy this locally), is a sturdy 12 volt car battery that is charged up by that lethal-looking battery charger when there is mains grid power available. A fully-charged car battery can supplly my laptop with enough juice for perhaps 24 hours or more. I 'abandon' the battery on my return by plane, since transporting car batteries isn't permitted, (and it's too heavy for me to lug around anyway!).

I must admit that I have been curious about this.

I also admit that I need about 10,000 Watts just to run my stuff.

So, I would require about an acre of solar panels from China?

And, many batteries?

I think people here in Thailand do not fully comprehend how lucky we are.

Yet: You are adapting well. I am interested.

8 hours ago, richard_smith237 said:

Seems like a loaded question.

All the power outages we encounter in Bangkok occur during power storms when a transformer blows - usually once or twice per year for brief intervals.

We get hiccups in Northern Lamphun pretty often. A couple a week on average. Generally it a 5 second outage that takes my internet router offline and forces it to reboot. Then we get the real outage which most often happen during early to late evening thunderstorms like we've been having recently. Those no doubt take down power-lines and transformers.

My advice is get solar and batteries, hand your meter back, get your deposit back and never have a power outage or an electric bill ever again - working great for me.

In my first seven or so years here in rural Thailand, I'd have a blackout pretty much anytime there was moderate-to-heavy rain. Or decent wind. Or it started getting cooler around November. Or it started getting hot around Songkran. Anecdotally the reasons were:
1) Water would enter the transformer or substation and create a short.
2) Trees/vines (as mentioned by others) would fall on or against lines.
3) Snakes would enter the substations or transformers to keep warm. Or to get rats
4) They'd overheat as (apparently) the insulation was unserviceable [I suggested maybe even eaten by aforementioned rats] OR Snakes would enter to keep cool.

Of course, there's always the chance of some tool on a two-stroke motorbike older than The Sun, without headlights, taillights, working brakes, or baffles in its exhaust pipe, ploughing into a power pole doing Warp Factor Five, using his head as a crumple zone.

Electricity doesn't seem to be that important around here. It's a farming community where everyone (outside retail and government workers obviously) works during all the daylight hours, go home, eat, drink lau kau until 1930 and go to bed to wake and do it again the next day.
My house is the only one with air conditioning, one in each of the bedrooms. Two of my immediate neighbours don't even have refrigerators. Most people use fluorescent lights, and maybe the biggest drain would be - apart from those with fridges - the few that still have CRT televisions attached to their PSI terrestrial tv tuner, or have water heaters for their showers. Although, once again, I'm in a very rural and traditional area with most using a bucket and cup for bathing.

Over the last three-four years there has been substantial replacement and/or upgrades of the power poles, replacing wooden mounting plates on the older concrete poles with plastic ones, replacing insulators, and replacing the fifty year-old transformers on the poles with new ones. This I have seen with own eyes; with signage of scheduled outages placed, amazingly, before the work began.

Prior to the upgrades, I had bought four pure sine wave uninterruptible power supplies: one for the internet router; one for my bedroom tv and computer; one for my outside tv and computer; and one for my landlady's daughter's computer. These would trip easily a dozen times a year. Although there was a notable drop-off during the travel restrictions due to C19.

Blackouts did happen more often during the day than at night. I am a light sleeper and, although being moderately hearing impaired, would be woken up by my bedroom's UPS beeping as the mains power cut out.

Now? Three of the UPSes have had replacement batteries, while the fourth is a very expensive weight. They have probably only tripped twice since October. They are, however, very good at maintaining steady power output to my electronics during the occasional (monthly?) brownouts due ,invariably, to a vehicle becoming At One with something important further up the line.

16 minutes ago, Bandersnatch said:

My advice is get solar and batteries, hand your meter back, get your deposit back and never have a power outage or an electric bill ever again - working great for me.

Here in Bangkok, it is very rare to get a power outage other than for planned maintenance by my condo engineers. I think daytime has higher load due to A/C so more chance of transformer issues. Another factor, often seen in the news, is power poles being snagged and brought down by construction vehicles (happened in our soi a couple of years ago by a cement truck - MEA were great and has us back on-grid within a couple of hours on a Sunday).

Do they even still take depopsits for meters? During covid in 2020 the MEA refunded my 4,000 Baht meter deposit.

2 hours ago, GammaGlobulin said:

I must admit that I have been curious about this.

I also admit that I need about 10,000 Watts just to run my stuff.

So, I would require about an acre of solar panels from China?

And, many batteries?

I think people here in Thailand do not fully comprehend how lucky we are.

Yet: You are adapting well. I am interested.

I also take a solar panel controller unit, in case I have to purchase a solar panel (usually unnecessary since I can recharge my car battery from the mains electricity when it's available.)

Over the years, I have minimised my electricity energy consumption, just the fridge, laptop, mobile phones and LED lights. I don't usually need air-con nor even a fan, since I choose my accommodation to be well-shaded by trees (the latter are also useful to hang my ham radio antennas from, as an 'advertisement' to the local police that I'm possibly a spy.....)

2 hours ago, GammaGlobulin said:

Yet: You are adapting well. I am interested.

I am, actually, very interested.

I have, actually, puzzled about this, wondering how simon does this.

Cannot be easy, yet it is something very worthy, in the doing.

I will continue to be interested.

1 hour ago, Bandersnatch said:

My advice is get solar and batteries, hand your meter back, get your deposit back and never have a power outage or an electric bill ever again - working great for me.

I enjoyed your video.

But....

Just wear did all that COPPER come from?

Did it come from the Sun?

30 minutes ago, simon43 said:

I also take a solar panel controller unit, in case I have to purchase a solar panel (usually unnecessary since I can recharge my car battery from the mains electricity when it's available.)

Over the years, I have minimised my electricity energy consumption, just the fridge, laptop, mobile phones and LED lights. I don't usually need air-con nor even a fan, since I choose my accommodation to be well-shaded by trees (the latter are also useful to hang my ham radio antennas from, as an 'advertisement' to the local police that I'm possibly a spy.....)

As I stated, and as is true...

I believe what you are doing is very interesting, and,

Not only interesting to me.

As they say, 'necessity is the mother of invention'.

I think the Burmese people are the most inventive when it comes to day-to-day living and devices. Bring them a washing machine with a burnt out motor and they will manually (and labouriously) rewind that motor with old wire from some other electrical equipment so that the washing machine is usuable again.

An old motor that was unrepairable provided magnets that I could use in my Science lessons. My teaching assistant cannibalised an old fluorescent light to salvage the bimetallic thermal switch for other experiments. We grew plants on the school roof to use in coloured water experiments (to demonstrate how water moves up the stem to the flower, leafs etc.) So many challenges - so running my computer etc from a car battery and inverter is no longer a challenge :)