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Mystery of 60-Second Fluctuations in Power Grids Solved

What HN thinks

The power grid discovers the thundering herd problem, and the cron crowd nods knowingly.

Should have added jitter
Many commenters liken the cause to synchronized cron jobs and say devices should randomise check timing, a standard fix in distributed systems and already required for grid-tied inverters.
Why was this so hard?
Some question the 'years of detective work' claim, while others note the signal was small enough to need Fourier analysis over long periods amid millions of devices.
Mechanics of the effect
Commenters explain how synchronized battery or UPS load changes force turbines to slow and recover, adding cyclic stress, and note the paper says a UPS maker issued a firmware fix.

Consensus: Most agree the root cause is many devices acting on the exact same clock tick, and that adding randomised offsets is the obvious remedy.

Recommended in the comments

systemd timers (tool): They support randomised delays natively, avoiding hardcoded offsets in cron.

Summarised by Claude from the comment thread 8 hours ago.

Points: 219
Comments: 92
Best rank: #5
Posted: 2026-10-31 by _Microft
Category: Science

power-grids grid-frequency battery-storage energy-systems forschungszentrum-julich nature-energy

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