I remember I was working in a factory when we had a brownout (some electricity pylon had collapsed and so we only had 50% capacity via another pylon and it wasn’t enough to run all the factories in the area). Just like you say, the equipment really hated it. Most of the equipment is fine if you just shut it off without warning, not supposed to do it but it’s usually fine, but the low but not zero voltage caused no end of issues.
Also all the LED lights decided that the best way to deal with the situation was to just flicker at a really high frequency rather than just turning off, which would have honestly been more helpful.
AC electrical devices often adjust their current draw, based on the voltage. As the voltage drops, the current goes up. This increases the current load, as well as producing more heat. Devices often flicker rapidly between just on, and off. The LEDs were experiencing that.
DC is even worse. Microcontrollers REALLY do not like being browned out. I’ve seen it smoke components, as well as easily corrupting stored data.
I remember I was working in a factory when we had a brownout (some electricity pylon had collapsed and so we only had 50% capacity via another pylon and it wasn’t enough to run all the factories in the area). Just like you say, the equipment really hated it. Most of the equipment is fine if you just shut it off without warning, not supposed to do it but it’s usually fine, but the low but not zero voltage caused no end of issues.
Also all the LED lights decided that the best way to deal with the situation was to just flicker at a really high frequency rather than just turning off, which would have honestly been more helpful.
AC electrical devices often adjust their current draw, based on the voltage. As the voltage drops, the current goes up. This increases the current load, as well as producing more heat. Devices often flicker rapidly between just on, and off. The LEDs were experiencing that.
DC is even worse. Microcontrollers REALLY do not like being browned out. I’ve seen it smoke components, as well as easily corrupting stored data.