Very spooky weird electric problem

[fizzy]

I am totally baffled.
We just had a thunder storm pretty close. Electric went off for about 10 seconds.
When it came back as usual the TV and amp come on along with the nvidea shield.
Thought it would be a good idea to turn off the 6 way trailing socket. It has surge protection.
Turned it off at the wall.
Another lightening strike. Power off then back on.
Went into living room. TV and amp etc switched on and running. Neon illuminated on 6 way. Switch off on wall .
How the hell???
Pulled plug out of wall.
I thought maybe contacts had fused in switch but it's fine now.
HOW????

 

[Gareth J]

Stray volts coming via unswitched earth? (and maybe neutral..?)

Had something vaguely related here;
-Water leak upstairs, let water down a conduit to the kitchen light switch.
-under counter led strip starts flashing on/off in time with the electric fencer. Even when off!

I figured;
-I suspect the fencer is stealing some electrons from the earth connected to the supply pole (must sort that out!)
-The relatively tiny voltage fluctuations between earth and the unswitched neutral supplying the small led transformer were enough to provide a pulse of suitable electric to momentarily pulse the LEDs out the other side of the transformer.

In your situation, maybe similar is happening; the transformers in the kit are decent enough to reorganise whatever stray volts are floating about into something the units can use...?

 

[mike os]

capacitors in the amp?

 

[fizzy]

capacitors in the amp?

I thought of that but surely not enough to power an Oled TV for a few minutes along with an Nvidea Shield box?

 

[sako243]

I thought of that but surely not enough to power an Oled TV for a few minutes along with an Nvidea Shield box?

When you say powered do you mean in standby or actually on - if in standby then quite possibly they can use very little depending on how well things have been designed. Given the drive for greater efficiency these days I wouldn't be surprised.

I mean we quite often design logging systems that will run for over a year on a couple of AA batteries.

 

[fizzy]

When you say powered do you mean in standby or actually on - if in standby then quite possibly they can use very little depending on how well things have been designed. Given the drive for greater efficiency these days I wouldn't be surprised.

I mean we quite often design logging systems that will run for over a year on a couple of AA batteries.

Actually on with a picture!

 

[mike os]

Actually on with a picture!

nope that is odd

 

[fizzy]

nope that is odd

My brother found it. Was yelling for me to come and look. He thought he had gone mad

 

[mr haynes]

Easy, poltergeist

 

[Anguz]

Easy, poltergeist

their here

 

[dobbslc]

their here

^ reading that made the hair on my arms stand up

 

[dobbslc]

It's possible the TV etc were running from some kind of stray voltage in the neutral as you only isolate the live when you turned off the switch on the socket. Are you on an overhead supply?
TV'S, kettles etc will work when the live and neutral have been reversed say in an incorrectly connected 13A socket, they can't tell the difference as it's an AC supply. 240v 0v 240v 0v 240v 0v .........

 

[dobbslc]

I've not actually watched this so it might be rubbish...

 

[fizzy]

It's possible the TV etc were running from some kind of stray voltage in the neutral as you only isolate the live when you turned off the switch on the socket. Are you on an overhead supply?
TV'S, kettles etc will work when the live and neutral have been reversed say in an incorrectly connected 13A socket, they can't tell the difference as it's an AC supply. 240v 0v 240v 0v 240v 0v .........

That is what I was thinking. Yes overhead supply.
I don't know why we bother with live and neutral. In Europe it's just 2 pins doesn't matter which way around on AC.

 

[dobbslc]

I don't know why we bother with live and neutral. In Europe it's just 2 pins doesn't matter which way around on AC.

It's because we're far superior to the savages across the gradually widening channel
All our forum members excepted

 

[sako243]

I don't know why we bother with live and neutral.

Because of the three you need a live and a neutral - you can do away with the earth but it isn't because of safety.

 

[fizzy]

Because of the three you need a live and a neutral - you can do away with the earth but it isn't because of safety.

I meant it doesn't really matter which way around they go. Makes no difference on AC.

 

[daleyd]

Doesn’t make a difference for the majority of stuff but we fuse the live side in the plug whereas others don’t. That’s the main difference as far as I can tell.

 

[Other Daniel]

With AC there is no live and neutral per se.
They both spend an equal amount of time being the other.

 

[lotus_esprit_s1]

If one of the HV drop out fuses on the HV line feeding the transformer blows you can sometimes get strange things like this on the LV side.
You have probably got an Auto-Recloser on the HV line which acts like a fuse and after a pre-determined time will close the line back in again (hence the power back on so quickly) so you could’ve had a transient fault on one of the three HV wires causing the strange behaviour, then the line is closed back in and it goes back to normal. I went to a fault recently where one of the fuses was hanging down, but low powered items in households were still working.

I dont know why, i’m not clued up on the technical side, I just reload the fuses and rehang them!