[Diabolical Artificer]

The old thread didn't come up in a search I did, odd, so it's not a new phenomenon.

I've no issue here on our supply AFAIK but will check. We live in a small village so are maybe less afflicted.

I find this subject hard to get my head around, as I tend to think of mains electricity ( and DC to a point being uni-directional, I mean a schematic goes from left to right, IP and an OP, that is unless you stop to think in terms of current. This multi dimensional aspect of electronics is tricky, at least for me ( and probably other beginners).

As far as I understand it then, devices that use halfwave rectification and thyristors/traics cause a DC component to be fed back into the mains. So, does this DC offset just sit there or is peroidical, IE only present when a large amount of folk are drying their hair or using drills?

The comment about thyratron dimmers made me think of the old teletype machines once common in use that used a thyratron PSU, was this an issue?

Andy.