What is the difference between a brownout and a blackout?

[coloradodem2005]

I am referring to a post about Enron and California.


If this hit big, it would show that Governor Davis got "Reagened" for all the wrong reasons.

[GOPisEvil]

1. Easy.

Brownouts are periods of reduced electrical availability, meaning power for essential things is provided, but large use items may have their power reduced.

Blackouts are a total inavailability of electricity to a given area.

[Kolesar]

2. I thought "brownouts" meant reduced voltages on the line

Also known as a "sag". Increased voltage is a "swell".

[Old and In the Way]

3. Yes.......reduced voltage.

Which makes lightbulbs go dim. Can be a real problem for equipment that needs to operate on rated voltage.

[Throckmorton]

4. According to IEEE-100

A brown-out is a sustained, degraded voltage condition. My Plant Tech Specs call any bus voltage of less than 88.5%, for more than 8 seconds, a sustained degraded voltage condition.

A black out is a total loss of voltage.

[BigMcLargehuge]

5. brownouts are preceded by a series of increasingly powerful gas explosions

blackouts aren't..

[CO Liberal]

6. We Had a Blackout in Pueblo West This Morning

As I was getting ready to leave for work, the house went dark. I looked out in the alley behind us to see if there were utility workers out there, but there were none. Then I noticed there were no lights on at the neighbor's house.

I called Aquila (our electric company) to report the outage, and left for work. When I got to the Loaf & Jug where I normally get my coffee and paper, it was dark - so was the time/temperature clock on teh bank across the street, and the electric price sign on the Safeway gas station across the highway. So I called my wife on her cell phone to tell her the whole area was out.

She called me about 20 minutes later to say the power had been restored.