Frequency Disturbances During the Super Bowl: It's More Than Just What's on the Field

Power system dispatchers throughout the Eastern Interconnection (EI) of the United States regularly observe unusual frequency movements during the Super Bowl championship game of American football. While these movements have not been a threat to security to date, they are large enough to warrant explanation. We have found the explanation for these frequency movements through load and frequency monitoring, together with careful observation. Two mechanisms are at work. First, television viewers defer load-producing activities during periods of high interest and then carry out these activities during periods of lower interest. Second, changes in the brightness of a televised image result in appreciable changes in the load of television sets. During the Super Bowl, there is an unusually large number of televisions all displaying the same programming and an unusually large number of television viewers whose activities are synchronized to this programming. The outstanding example of the aggregated impact of changes in television image brightness occurred following a partial power outage at the Superdome stadium during Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans on 3 February 2013.