A couple nights ago we had a really bad storm. Five inches of rain in
an hour. I now have ruts all over the place. But that's not why I'm
posting. During the storm I unplugged everything because the
lightning was really bad. I only things I left turned on were a few
lights, a window fan, and my battery operated weather radio. The
power went of several times, but it would come back on in less than a
minute. This is pretty normal, especially out here in the country.
Generally a bright and close flash of lightning will cause this. All
of a sudden there was another very bright flash of lightning, and the
lights went out, but this time when they came back on, the bulbs were
barely lit. Just a dull glow, as if they were getting half or less
voltage. These are common incadesant bulbs, not CF bulbs. They
remained in this barely on state for maybe a half minute, and the fan
motor had a noticable hum. Then they came back on to normal
brightness.

I can understand the power going totally off, and know the power
company has resets on poles and such, but why did I get this half
power thing? I'm glad I unplugged the electronics or I might be
replacing lots of stuff.

I know someone is going to ask, so I have 120/240 single phase in the
house. This was not something just in my house, both my, and my
neighbors yard lights went out.

On Aug 16, 4:39 am, wrote:
A couple nights ago we had a really bad storm. Five inches of rain in
an hour. I now have ruts all over the place. But that's not why I'm
posting. During the storm I unplugged everything because the
lightning was really bad. I only things I left turned on were a few
lights, a window fan, and my battery operated weather radio. The
power went of several times, but it would come back on in less than a
minute. This is pretty normal, especially out here in the country.
Generally a bright and close flash of lightning will cause this. All
of a sudden there was another very bright flash of lightning, and the
lights went out, but this time when they came back on, the bulbs were
barely lit. Just a dull glow, as if they were getting half or less
voltage. These are common incadesant bulbs, not CF bulbs. They
remained in this barely on state for maybe a half minute, and the fan
motor had a noticable hum. Then they came back on to normal
brightness.

I can understand the power going totally off, and know the power
company has resets on poles and such, but why did I get this half
power thing? I'm glad I unplugged the electronics or I might be
replacing lots of stuff.

I know someone is going to ask, so I have 120/240 single phase in the
house. This was not something just in my house, both my, and my
neighbors yard lights went out.

This I think is commonly called a "Brown Out". The power station
cannot supply sufficient voltage, so basically instead of seeing 120v
you may be seeing say 40 volts only. Hence everything is sort of dim.

best, Mike.

Generally this will happen when a tree branch arcs out a line down the road
a ways. You may have actually seen the light of the arcing and not
lighting. Lighting could have also hit a transformer on your line somewhere
and fried it out.


steve


wrote in message
...
A couple nights ago we had a really bad storm. Five inches of rain in
an hour. I now have ruts all over the place. But that's not why I'm
posting. During the storm I unplugged everything because the
lightning was really bad. I only things I left turned on were a few
lights, a window fan, and my battery operated weather radio. The
power went of several times, but it would come back on in less than a
minute. This is pretty normal, especially out here in the country.
Generally a bright and close flash of lightning will cause this. All
of a sudden there was another very bright flash of lightning, and the
lights went out, but this time when they came back on, the bulbs were
barely lit. Just a dull glow, as if they were getting half or less
voltage. These are common incadesant bulbs, not CF bulbs. They
remained in this barely on state for maybe a half minute, and the fan
motor had a noticable hum. Then they came back on to normal
brightness.

I can understand the power going totally off, and know the power
company has resets on poles and such, but why did I get this half
power thing? I'm glad I unplugged the electronics or I might be
replacing lots of stuff.

I know someone is going to ask, so I have 120/240 single phase in the
house. This was not something just in my house, both my, and my
neighbors yard lights went out.

In article .com,
hobbes wrote:

On Aug 16, 4:39 am, wrote:
A couple nights ago we had a really bad storm. Five inches of rain in
an hour. I now have ruts all over the place. But that's not why I'm
posting. During the storm I unplugged everything because the
lightning was really bad. I only things I left turned on were a few
lights, a window fan, and my battery operated weather radio. The
power went of several times, but it would come back on in less than a
minute. This is pretty normal, especially out here in the country.
Generally a bright and close flash of lightning will cause this. All
of a sudden there was another very bright flash of lightning, and the
lights went out, but this time when they came back on, the bulbs were
barely lit. Just a dull glow, as if they were getting half or less
voltage. These are common incadesant bulbs, not CF bulbs. They
remained in this barely on state for maybe a half minute, and the fan
motor had a noticable hum. Then they came back on to normal
brightness.

I can understand the power going totally off, and know the power
company has resets on poles and such, but why did I get this half
power thing? I'm glad I unplugged the electronics or I might be
replacing lots of stuff.

I know someone is going to ask, so I have 120/240 single phase in the
house. This was not something just in my house, both my, and my
neighbors yard lights went out.

This I think is commonly called a "Brown Out". The power station
cannot supply sufficient voltage, so basically instead of seeing 120v
you may be seeing say 40 volts only. Hence everything is sort of dim.

best, Mike.

I'll second that and add that electric motors don't like low voltage. So
next time, unplug the fan, and especially the refrigerator. Campgrounds
for motorhomes are famous for being ill-equipped to supply sufficient
power for the number of guests; as a result, voltage drops, and the
refrigerator motors all burn out.

wrote:
A couple nights ago we had a really bad storm. Five inches of rain in
an hour. I now have ruts all over the place. But that's not why I'm
posting. During the storm I unplugged everything because the
lightning was really bad. I only things I left turned on were a few
lights, a window fan, and my battery operated weather radio. The
power went of several times, but it would come back on in less than a
minute. This is pretty normal, especially out here in the country.
Generally a bright and close flash of lightning will cause this. All
of a sudden there was another very bright flash of lightning, and the
lights went out, but this time when they came back on, the bulbs were
barely lit. Just a dull glow, as if they were getting half or less
voltage. These are common incadesant bulbs, not CF bulbs. They
remained in this barely on state for maybe a half minute, and the fan
motor had a noticable hum. Then they came back on to normal
brightness.

I can understand the power going totally off, and know the power
company has resets on poles and such, but why did I get this half
power thing? I'm glad I unplugged the electronics or I might be
replacing lots of stuff.

I know someone is going to ask, so I have 120/240 single phase in the
house. This was not something just in my house, both my, and my
neighbors yard lights went out.

Could be a power line was knocked to the ground, resulting in high
current, producing a voltage drop, and a fuse finally opened.

Or a transformer shorted and the fuse finally opened

As you lower the voltage on an incandescent bulb, the brightness goes
down a lot faster than the voltage.

--
bud--

bud-- wrote:
wrote:
A couple nights ago we had a really bad storm. Five inches of rain in
an hour. I now have ruts all over the place. But that's not why I'm
posting. During the storm I unplugged everything because the
lightning was really bad. I only things I left turned on were a few
lights, a window fan, and my battery operated weather radio. The
power went of several times, but it would come back on in less than a
minute. This is pretty normal, especially out here in the country.
Generally a bright and close flash of lightning will cause this. All
of a sudden there was another very bright flash of lightning, and the
lights went out, but this time when they came back on, the bulbs were
barely lit. Just a dull glow, as if they were getting half or less
voltage. These are common incadesant bulbs, not CF bulbs. They
remained in this barely on state for maybe a half minute, and the fan
motor had a noticable hum. Then they came back on to normal
brightness.

I can understand the power going totally off, and know the power
company has resets on poles and such, but why did I get this half
power thing? I'm glad I unplugged the electronics or I might be
replacing lots of stuff.
I know someone is going to ask, so I have 120/240 single phase in the
house. This was not something just in my house, both my, and my
neighbors yard lights went out.

Could be a power line was knocked to the ground, resulting in high
current, producing a voltage drop, and a fuse finally opened.

Or a transformer shorted and the fuse finally opened

As you lower the voltage on an incandescent bulb, the brightness goes
down a lot faster than the voltage.

--
bud--


Or a neighbor back feeding onto the grid from incorrectly hooking up a
generator.

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

Since the power came back after about half a minute, I would say no fuse
blew on the line. Instead there may have been a major drain of power such as
mentioned below with a branch hanging onto the line but not creating a dead
short that would have blown the line fuse. With a major draining of power,
that left you enough to make the lamps glow, possibly the wind blew the
branch back off the lines allowing full power to be restored. Possibly, if
the branch stayed on the line much longer the fuse would have popped, and
you would be in the dark until a power line worker replaced the fuse.

"Steve Barker" wrote in message
...
Generally this will happen when a tree branch arcs out a line down the
road a ways. You may have actually seen the light of the arcing and not
lighting. Lighting could have also hit a transformer on your line
somewhere and fried it out.


steve


wrote in message
...
A couple nights ago we had a really bad storm. Five inches of rain in
an hour. I now have ruts all over the place. But that's not why I'm
posting. During the storm I unplugged everything because the
lightning was really bad. I only things I left turned on were a few
lights, a window fan, and my battery operated weather radio. The
power went of several times, but it would come back on in less than a
minute. This is pretty normal, especially out here in the country.
Generally a bright and close flash of lightning will cause this. All
of a sudden there was another very bright flash of lightning, and the
lights went out, but this time when they came back on, the bulbs were
barely lit. Just a dull glow, as if they were getting half or less
voltage. These are common incadesant bulbs, not CF bulbs. They
remained in this barely on state for maybe a half minute, and the fan
motor had a noticable hum. Then they came back on to normal
brightness.

I can understand the power going totally off, and know the power
company has resets on poles and such, but why did I get this half
power thing? I'm glad I unplugged the electronics or I might be
replacing lots of stuff.

I know someone is going to ask, so I have 120/240 single phase in the
house. This was not something just in my house, both my, and my
neighbors yard lights went out.

EXT wrote:
Since the power came back after about half a minute, I would say no fuse
blew on the line. Instead there may have been a major drain of power such as
mentioned below with a branch hanging onto the line but not creating a dead
short that would have blown the line fuse. With a major draining of power,
that left you enough to make the lamps glow, possibly the wind blew the
branch back off the lines allowing full power to be restored. Possibly, if
the branch stayed on the line much longer the fuse would have popped, and
you would be in the dark until a power line worker replaced the fuse.
....

Not a replaceable fuse, no, but a breaker may well have opened (and
probably did) to give the line a chance to clear of whatever was the
problem.

When it reset, sounds like a temporary sag which isn't too uncommon on
long lines, particularly if there might be a fairly sizable load
somewhere off the particular affected line. High inrush currents of all
those A/C's, fridges, etc., plus any other large single-point loads if
any all add up to quite a chunk...add that to a possibility of a partial
drain not quite cleared yet and not at all uncommon for it to take 30
seconds or so to recover...happens to us on the rural lines quite often.

--

wrote in message
...
A couple nights ago we had a really bad storm. Five inches of rain in
an hour. I now have ruts all over the place. But that's not why I'm
posting. During the storm I unplugged everything because the
lightning was really bad. I only things I left turned on were a few
lights, a window fan, and my battery operated weather radio. The
power went of several times, but it would come back on in less than a
minute. This is pretty normal, especially out here in the country.
Generally a bright and close flash of lightning will cause this. All
of a sudden there was another very bright flash of lightning, and the
lights went out, but this time when they came back on, the bulbs were
barely lit. Just a dull glow, as if they were getting half or less
voltage. These are common incadesant bulbs, not CF bulbs. They
remained in this barely on state for maybe a half minute, and the fan
motor had a noticable hum. Then they came back on to normal
brightness.

I can understand the power going totally off, and know the power
company has resets on poles and such, but why did I get this half
power thing? I'm glad I unplugged the electronics or I might be
replacing lots of stuff.

I know someone is going to ask, so I have 120/240 single phase in the
house. This was not something just in my house, both my, and my
neighbors yard lights went out.

Could have been a tree as others have said, but it could also be a phase
loss condition since your power is a single phase from three phase
distribution. The commercial building I worked in would often lose a phase
thanks to a squirrel or some other accident that would trip on of the
phases. Some of the outlets would go to about half voltage until full
service was restored.
John