Why do these brief outages seem to occur frequently in some neighborhoods? In addition, animals and reptiles sometimes interfere with our underground power cables, causing flickers or longer outages. Why are homes and businesses served by an underground power line affected by flickers?Įven if you receive electric service from underground power lines, you may be affected by brief outages because the underground wires ultimately connect with overhead lines and equipment – including power substations – that may be located away from your neighborhood. The causes of flickers – animals and vegetation making contact with power lines, lightning and other factors – never take a rest. While power flickers are more common during stormy or windy conditions, they can occur at any time and in any weather. Why do they occur in good weather – even on a sunny day? In coastal areas, salt spray from the ocean can affect FPL equipment and cause flickers at your home or business. There are several factors that can trigger power flickers: lightning, damaged electrical equipment, and objects making contact with power lines, including tree branches, palm fronds and vegetation – even animals. See our fact sheet, Reducing Power Flickers, for additional information. Here are the most common questions we receive from our customers. Without this brief interruption, the outage could last several hours, spread to other power lines and affect service for thousands of customers.Īt FPL, we understand how frustrating power outages, or flickers, can be – and we’re committed to reducing them and their impact on you. Briefly shutting off power and isolating the problem area helps prevent damage to the electric system, which could result in a longer outage and affect many more customers.įor example, a flicker on your local power line could affect electric service for you and 200 of your neighbors. This process allows the system to determine if there is a break in the line or other electrical difficulty. The tree branch or palm frond typically falls to the ground, allowing service to be restored quickly. When the branch makes contact with our lines (A), the system detects the interference and shuts off electricity to that section of the line for a brief period – usually a few seconds (B). One of the most common causes of power flickers is when a tree branch or palm frond is blown into overhead power lines. Let's look at one example using the illustration below. See below for more information, as well as the accompanying video, fact sheet and FAQs. And we want you to know we’re working hard on our commitment to reduce them. We apologize if you’ve experienced a problem with your electric service due to power flickers. That’s why we’ve mounted a major effort – the first of its kind in the nation – to reduce those brief, yet frustrating flickers. While we’ve made good progress in reducing power outages – providing customers with more than 99.98 percent service reliability – power flickers are an ongoing challenge for FPL and electric utilities nationwide. You want reliable electric service, and it’s our job to provide it. Regardless of what you call them, they’re annoying because they can briefly shut down the electronic devices and appliances in your home or business. The problem is I'm not sure why.Power flickers … momentary outages … brief service interruptions – these are some of the terms used to describe brief power outages lasting less than 60 seconds. I think what happened is the graphics card overheated, and probably needed time to cool down.
I shut it down and let it sit for 20 minutes, then was able to power it on successfully. The computer would power on, but I had no picture on the monitor. This time a power cycle didn't get things back up and running.
My computer on the other hand, had all fans spinning at 100% and was getting pretty warm to the touch. It must have been a split second outage again, because none of the clocks reset, but it was enough that my NAS was shut down. This morning while I was at work, the power flickered again. A power cycle was all it took to get back to normal. Not enough to reset any of my clocks, but enough that when I returned to my computer it was acting strangely with all fans spinning at 100%. I posted this over in the ASRock X99 thread in the SFF forum, but I'll probably get more views here, and it may not be specific to the motherboard.