Wow. Somehow I just assumed there was an atomic clock somewhere syncing the whole system. Even some affordable portable generators are starting to have pure sine inverters with rock stable frequency.
Having the timing determined by the rotational speeds of all the generators as well as the loads seems ridiculous. Yet it provides some insight into how fragile this distributied system is.
Great write-up, thanks for taking the time and making the effort to explain this. 
Yes. Across the board, it is cheaper to manufacture clocks that use use line frequency rather than a high quality oscillator. Although in north america the inexpensive clocks are designed to use 60Hz.
The article says “since mid-January, Europe’s standard electrical frequency of 50 hertz has fallen ever so slightly to 49.996 hertz” which presumably is referring to an average frequency over some time period.
49.996 Hz is off by .004 Hz, or 4 thousandths of a cycle per second. Which means that in a day (86,400 seconds), a timepiece will skew by 345.6 cycles (or 6.912 seconds). That adds up quickly.
Yes, the grid may fluctuate around the target frequency, but historically utilities have managed the fluctuation above and below the target frequency so that the average is dead on, allowing timepieces to keep accurate time in the long run.
aka tragedy of the commons.
Oh sure, I’ll go with France as consistent, but Serbia beats it for single-handed awfulness.
Why would you put a battery into a stove or a microwave to run the clock off? Obviously you can run it off mains power by way of a low-voltage DC power supply, which the microwave probably needs anyway to power the actual LED or LCD to show the time it’s keeping.
And BTW I flatly refuse to set clocks in appliances. I have enough clocks in all kinds of devices that synchronize with the DCF77 radio time signal, GPS, the cell phone network or the internet. Any non-self-setting applience clocks simply go unset. I want to know the time, I’ll check the radio-controlled wall clock.
Most devices use a crystal oscillator, not line frequency. Ovens, microwaves, alarm clocks… As do any battery-powered devices, of course, unless they have Internet or cellular connections.
That, and when I tried to travel with the other clock, I found out I needed a really, really long power cord. 
No, not for timing they don’t.
Well these days anyway… Before 1948, LA's Power Grid Was Incompatible With the Rest of the US
I used to leave my clocks set at british summer time so when they went back in the fall they’d show an hour faster
So that’s why… I have an old LED radio clock that’s 30-35 years old and wondered why it was slow all of a sudden.
Back when I was working as a journalist in the 1990s I privately gave the inhabitants of the region the generic name “the Balkans.” They may differ in ethnicity, in religious belief, in language and dialect, in politics, but they’re all unified in their propensity to hold endless and self-renewing violent grudges that spill over beyond their region.
While Quebec runs 60Hz, it’s isolated from the rest of the grid and doesn’t have to be synchronized with it.
The Fractal Hate Zone.
Truly, and often for the pettiest or most stale of reasons. From the nation-state level right down to next door neighbours and family members it’s nothing but Hatfields vs McCoys, PJF vs JPF, and Big-Endians vs. Little-Endians.
In the mid-1950s our high school class toured a big generating station near Cleveland. I was most impressed with their line frequency monitor, which had of a row of about eight nixie tubes, flickering around 60.000000 cps.
I suspect the Black Hand behind this.
It’s all about how most the device costs to make.
for a lot of things, you have an existing pulse generator in the power grid, so you don’t have to cough up the pennies for each unit to build in a pulse generator for the clock; you just snag your pulses from the incoming line and drop the voltage levels down to something safe n sane. (a clever way might be to drop the line voltage down before feeding it to the rectifrier so you can tap off that reduced AC line for your pulses.)
Sure, it’s not atomic clock precise, and it won’t set itself automatically, but hey! you can advertise that the thing has a built in clock, add a bit to the price for that ‘feature’ that cost you two pennies to implement, and use that extra money to put fancy sails on the CEO’s yacht.
I mean… all of them? Germany? France?
