South Kerry in timezone of its own as electric clocks go cuckoo

The population of South Kerry has been in a different timezone in recent weeks after the clocks suddenly began to go “cuckoo”.

The phenomenon, which saw some clocks lose over 20 minutes in seven days, was first noticed by Valentia Island resident Patrick Curtin.

Mr Curtin said some weeks back he noticed the early morning news bulletin on his radio was not chiming with the time on the electrically-powered clock radio. A small, battery-operated travel clock seemed to be keeping perfect time, however.

“Three weeks ago I noticed the electric clock was not in time with the six am news. The cooker clock was gone off as well. I said it to a few people and they said their clocks had gone cuckoo as well.”

Mr Curtin began recording the time difference and overnight he had lost three minutes, and over seven days he recorded a loss of 23 minutes for the household.

The loss was usually overnight.

When he contacted local radio, the station told Mr Curtin it had received a flood of calls about similar experiences in South Kerry, particularly around Cahersiveen.

People were out of kilter with the rest of the world and the people of South Kerry may have been “a bit slow” over the past few weeks, said Mr Curtin.

The phenomenon was finally traced to works being carried out on the ESB networks in Cahersiveen. A spokesman for ESB yesterday said the company had been upgrading the network, and rather than have customers without power, it had installed generators. Unfortunately, this may have had a “slight” impact on power and could have affected electric clocks.

“This is essential maintenance,” the spokesman said.

The works were finishing and the network restored this week, meaning that perfect time would once more be kept in Cahersiveen.

For electric clocks to function properly a minimum frequency of 50Hz is needed, but the generators may have seen lower, power frequencies, especially at night, meaning that when people woke in the morning their clocks would be behind.

Older computers may also have been affected.