I have had one weird issue with the power supply of a Leica fluorescence microscope in the 1990s. I was developing and supporting an image processing package that supported three different frame-grabber/image-processing boards, either the Matrox PIP1024(A/B variants), which were fairly basic, or the more powerful Matrox MVP/AT-NP boards, equipped with a neighborhood processor (NP), that could perform GPU-like stuff way back in 1992 (video-rate 3x3 convolutions and the like). Both PIP1024 variants run happily on the same software, but the MVP/AT-NP needed a different library linked to the executable. Three systems lived happily in the Department of Medical Microbiology, and another, with an MVP/AT-NP board was installed at the Department of Dermatology. This caused no end of trouble. Code that ran happily at the microbiology department caused crashes on the same hardware at dermatology. I got seriously suspicious when they people at dermatology mentioned that whenever the UV lamp's power supply was switched on, the computer crashed. They developed a protocol that they first switched on the power supply of the microscope, and then booted up the computer. Clearly, the power supply was causing spikes on the mains voltage when switched on. I then surmised that when my code ran on this fast processor, RFI from the power supply was at fault. Indeed, when the power supply was switched off, all my code ran sweetly. On a hunch, I linked the library for the MVT/AT (but not NP) board to the code for dermatology, and all was well. Bit of a bummer we could only use the expensive NP unit when the microscope was not being used.

No problems with coffee (or tea) fortunately.

Re the 'tiny LED displays' - the display on the desktop calculator my team of 5 shared in 1975 at Avon County Council finance dept had green vacuum-fluorescent digits, and it looks like the ones in the linked picture are using Nixie tubes, fashionable now for clocks I believe, sort of retro-steampunk?

There is an area west of Los Angeles (west end of simi valley) that houses a lot of industrial machines (with large motors...inductive loads). They also rent to retail businesses. Apparently the local power company has never seen fit to install the proper capacitors on the power lines to balance the inductive loads and the retail shops will suffer with mystery problems on any computers until someone helpfully points out they will likely need an isolating UPS.

I have learned a long time ago the usefulness of an UPS to keep PCs from getting damaged by power surges or cuts.

Funny, because I live not far from a nuclear power station (about 15km, give or take a few). You'd think that the quality of the power line would be reliable so close to the generator, but you'd be mistaken.

All of my electronic equipment is, at minimum, connected to the mains with a surge protector (TV, stereo, fridge, freezer, etc). In my home office I have a 1600 VA UPS to which all my desktops, my NAS, the connection box and the telephone are connected.

If there is a power cut, I power down the computers and leave just the phone and the box connected to ensure that I can still use my laptop's WiFi if required until the power comes back on.

But I am never again going to trust the mains to give proper juice to my computer equipment. Yes, I know that, in the past 20 years, standards have evolved and computers are more resiliant.

I'm still not taking the risk.

The trick is not to be near the power station, but to be near important consumers. I used to work out of an office that was connected to the same substation as a major hospital, a small military base, and a national broadcaster. We had almost zero power cuts, and on the rare occasions that we did, it was usually back on before the UPS's had to start shedding load.

Absolutely. During the 1970s, when UK power was not at its most reliable, we were on the same substation as the newly built District General Hospital.

Not that we had much computing power in the house to worry about at the time, so UPS wasn't an issue (Lunar Lander on a Sinclair calculator ran off batteries).

I went to a site in India and had to visit some people in the backroom - and it was the back room with no windows. They had one power lead into the room, and other power lead was daisy chained off it. If people powered on their machines one at a time everything worked. If they all powered the machines on at once, it drew too much current and blew the fuse. Everything was fine till they had a power cut. When the power was restored all the machines started at once and so blew the fuse.

I also remember visiting India on holiday where the fuse board had a nail instead of a fuse, and the hotel room had live wires adjacent to the light switch.

About 30 years ago, I visited a supplier in Lahore, Pakistan. They stamped out and powder-coated the panels for consumer units.

The factory was in a 4 story unit, with one process per floor, stamping from sheet metal on the ground floor, acid wash on the first, powder coating on the second, finishing and inspection on the top floor, then the finished products slid down a chute to a packing station in the rear yard.

At the time, the area was experiencing rolling blackouts due to a power shortage, so they had 4-hours on, 4-hours off.

The cutting and powder-coating floors used a lot of power, the acid bath and finishing floors not so much, in fact the acid bath guys carried on working in the dark.

Anyway, nobody thought to shut the machines down properly during the power-off times, so every single time the power returned, the fuses blew, and they had to replace them.

Interestingly, while they made the panels for consumer units, they didn't use them, the power cables running to bare wire terminals in a bakelite box, the person replacing the fuse simply donned a pair of rubber gloves, plucked out the dead fuse, popped in a new one then ran away very quickly in case it blew up.

I recall a client (back in the 1990's) who had a small design office with half a dozen or so staff on drawing boards. It was in NE Scotland and it was heated with simple electric panel heaters on the walls, the type with built-in timers and simple thermostats. In winter, the office was often cold and staff invariably had to manually adjust the heaters near them to keep their space at a comfortable temperature. The problem was then that they would forget to readjust them at the end of the day and a weekend with the heaters on full was a wasted expense. The boss decided to have a master time switch installed on the common feed, so everything went off at the end of Friday's work and back on an hour before work started on Monday. What could possibly go wrong? Well - a freezing start to the week. When the timer switched power on that first Monday morning, the main breaker tripped. I did a quick calculation of power draw and the heaters, if all were on, required around 150A; the breaker was 90A. Of course it blew. With the heaters individually controlled, the chance of them all drawing full power at the same time was negligible but, all coming on from cold at the same time...

The time switch was quickly removed and the heaters returned to individual control; switched off overnight and at weekends, with a rota for someone to come in early on cold mornings to switch them on (usually the boss - as it was his money he was saving)!

Me neither.

It's a septic thing a [1]four core three phase (115VAC)+neutral cable manufactured by Southwire.

No idea what the equivalent 240 VAC cable would be called in AU or UK.

With a drop of 50V I would have thought E 2 /R might have made the Romex cable fairly hot if not the coffee.

When I was a kid some my contemporaries had a rock band whose "sparkie†" (the drummer I think) used to run 240VAC to the light show over 2 core (solid) Bell wire for cheapness and if a particular set of lights were illuminated for more than 15-30 seconds the insulation on the wire started smoking along its length. Quite spectacular but fortunately I never could tolerate loud music and always withdrew to be incinerated another day. :)

† totally unqualified - " Electricity: it's just like plumbing " - not that he was a plumber.

.

[1] https://www.southwire.com/wire-cable/building-wire/romex-sup-sup-brand-simpull-sup-sup-copper-type-nm-b-cable/p/SPEC10028

It's just called "3 core and Earth"... Not as common as the single-phase variety "Twin and Earth" used for house wiring.

Must have made the cables nice and toasty, if approx half the power was being lost in them.

By all accounts, the NERC office at Barry were built on reclaimed rubble. Apparently one of the cleaner's duties was to water the earth stake first thing, otherwise the phones wouldn't ring!

I can remember that being quite an issue back in 1976 (very hot dry summer here in the UK with water shortages). Phone lines were often externally earthed to a ground spike so yes, if your phone wouldn't ring the advice was to find the stake and water it.