OK, I clicked through twice to get to the "AP Exclusive" story. It appears you are correct. That story mentions an error of 14 seconds in one day (14 seconds in 86,400 seconds). That works out to about 0.01Hz for a 60Hz base signal. That should not be a significant deviation in terms of motor reliability. But 14 seconds/day error for clocks is significant.
Doe Eyes wrote:
From what I can tell, the worst case variance for 60 Hz power would be about .01 Hz. So the frequency could vary from 60.01 to 59.99 Hz. I cannot imagine that the medical industry designs equipment that cannot deal with this level of frequency variance. I also cannot see how this would adversely affect home appliances.
>> But 14 seconds/day error for clocks is significant. <<
Maybe so, but only if variations in the Hertzian domain are biased toward one direction or another — that is, biased “plus” or “minus” from 60 cps.
On the other hand, if the variations are more-or-less randomly distributed (which I suspect they’ll tend to be), then they should cancel out before almost any homeowner has a chance to notice a time discrepancy between his old-fashioned electric clock and WWV.