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Surge protectors

Offler

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I would like ask few questions about surge protectors and expensive cabling in general.

First of all, I do not believe, and I never measured any improvement in sound based on changing cables or surge protector. Also surge protector would not likely survive direct hit by a lightning.

There are two stories I would like to share and ask about.

One day a PSU in my old PC died.
It was quite spectacular, because all the capacitors exploded and plastic parts of transformer have melted. Fuse was intact and what turned off the power were breakers. No other component suffered any damage, and I was told I was lucky, because the PSU was connected directly to the wall, without any extension cords, because they could burn in the incident.

On other hand I was recommended to get some basic but decent surge protector, for the possibility of such event in the future. The recommendation was not about getting better quality power, filter noise or such thing, but to assure that if any component burns out like this, other appliances in the house will not suffer from such event, or that possible short circuit will be broken much earlier. On other hand, yes surge protectors contains coils and capacitors, so they can filter noise in case there is any.

Is this recommendation correct?
 

jtwrace

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Nothing will survive a direct lightning strike if it's plugged in. That being said, as Jim will explain below 80% of surges come from within your home. Yes, they can filter if they have the proper design.

 
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bravomail

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I hope ur house is grounded/protected against lightnings. Mine is. Majority of the houses are.
Surge protector will provide some filtration and short circuit protection.
Additionally, in US, in bathrooms, we have overload protected power receptacles. I guess somebody sued after throwing a toaster or hair dryer into a bath. :)
So, maybe check, if u have such protected receptacles available in your local hardware store, and install them.
 

BDWoody

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Also surge protector would not likely survive direct hit by a lightning.

Not likely... Doesn't mean you don't do what you can for surges, but not much will survive a direct strike.
16-106833-Lightning-Damaged-Panel.jpg
 

Lambda

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Nothing will survive a lightning strike if it's plugged in.
Not always true.
PAY-Terrifying-moment-plane-struck-by-lightning-as-it-takes-off-from-airport.jpg

sddefault.jpg


If your houses is made from steel reinforced concrete and has proper lightning conductor and Grounding and ,equipotential bonding.
And if utility cables come from underground...

The absolute voltage is not dangerous to your Equipment.
birds.jpg


The Voltage difference is what cause (current) damage

So if you can make sure your whole system ,everything it touches or is close to are at the same potential nothing will happen.
In cases of lightning strike all the current needs to some how go into the grounding.
Your local grounding must be Low impedance and its potential must rises equally over the area of your building.

But this is all stuff you don't do yourself...
Bez-n%C3%A1zvu-2.png

You wold need a whole professionally installed system starting at the meter and your grounding.

Plug in Surge protectors are Only a last line of defense and since they have no low impedance part to ground they can only effectively protect for low power and differential mode Over voltage.

You want to keep this most current as far away from the thinks you wont to protect therefore
Start At the Meter then in the Distribution box.

Also fused outlet with fast blowing fuses.

And isolation transformer do provide excellent protection.

So a lot of things can be done to protect from something that might never happen.
Mov based Plug in protectors do little and maybe sett your house on fire..
 
OP
O

Offler

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I hope ur house is grounded/protected against lightnings. Mine is. Majority of the houses are.
Surge protector will provide some filtration and short circuit protection.
Additionally, in US, in bathrooms, we have overload protected power receptacles. I guess somebody sued after throwing a toaster or hair dryer into a bath. :)
So, maybe check, if u have such protected receptacles available in your local hardware store, and install them.
Houses are usually protected by lightning rods.

Protected receptacles are not standard here, In general its believed that tripping a breaker is enough to protect electrical appliances and the cables inside the walls that can be 16-20A at 230V. I am sure it will protect the cables in the walls...

So I use surge protectors, in order to break the circuit earlier at 10A - which is (not by accident) maximum which can be delivered by the cord of the surge protector. If my appliances consume 985W at most, but 230W in typical scenario, getting anywhere near to 2300 Watts means a problem.
 

storing

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Don't a lot of devices have some kind of surge protection built in?

Also wondering: how about claims that if you use a power strip to toggle a lot of devices at once, a surge protector is basically mandatory because of overvoltage produced by back-EMF? I mean in theory that could be a problem, but I really wonder if it is in practice, as in powering on a couple of audio devices and a PC perhaps. Also in practice, an anecdote: at one of the workplaces we use (wall) power strips to toggle systems with 3 desktops with 5 screens and a mix of other devices like an oscilloscope or 2, signal generators, analog filter devices, microcontrollers, ... We have about 20 of such rooms and have been doing this daily for over 10 years. Not once we found a problem which could be related to toggling poer like that. Hence I'm a bit skeptical.
 
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Offler

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This is the specific product i purchased for about 40 dollars?

230v, 10A, circuit breaker, indicator if the grounding is not working, or when all the appliances are overloading it. All good to this point.

this claim is ofc little bit odd:
"Attenuates EMI/RFI line noise that can cause data errors and keyboard lockups, ensuring better performance of protected equipment."

There is an effect when you power on some device which takes a lot of power, lamp connected to same power strip may blink, but more complex devices do have enough capacitors to not be affected in such way.

The only interference i am aware of is USB 3.0 and Wifi 2,4GHz/Bluetooth, so nothing to be solved by a surge protector or power strip.

Also if there is a source of noise in my PC, its expected that such surge protector will filter it out - but again all components which do that are in the power supplies as well.
 

Harmonie

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Nothing will survive a direct lightning strike if it's plugged in. That being said, as Jim will explain below 80% of surges come from within your home. Yes, they can filter if they have the proper design.


Don't know why it reminds me this (hoax)
 

Ingenieur

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Ingenieur

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I would like ask few questions about surge protectors and expensive cabling in general.

First of all, I do not believe, and I never measured any improvement in sound based on changing cables or surge protector. Also surge protector would not likely survive direct hit by a lightning.

There are two stories I would like to share and ask about.

One day a PSU in my old PC died.
It was quite spectacular, because all the capacitors exploded and plastic parts of transformer have melted. Fuse was intact and what turned off the power were breakers. No other component suffered any damage, and I was told I was lucky, because the PSU was connected directly to the wall, without any extension cords, because they could burn in the incident.

On other hand I was recommended to get some basic but decent surge protector, for the possibility of such event in the future. The recommendation was not about getting better quality power, filter noise or such thing, but to assure that if any component burns out like this, other appliances in the house will not suffer from such event, or that possible short circuit will be broken much earlier. On other hand, yes surge protectors contains coils and capacitors, so they can filter noise in case there is any.

Is this recommendation correct?
When the computer blew up was your home struck by lighting?
A large power surge?

Or did it just have an internal fault?
Under a fault the CB may outrace the fuses.

Really, nothing could prevent that.
 
OP
O

Offler

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When the computer blew up was your home struck by lighting?
A large power surge?

Or did it just have an internal fault?
Under a fault the CB may outrace the fuses.

Really, nothing could prevent that.
No, the PSU just blew due to an internal fault - shortcircuit - probably due faulty transformer which slowly burned away the isolation.

The concern was that such fault would not damage other appliances on the same power strip, or damage powerstrip itself. Cable near the carpet on fire is not a good prospect as well. So surge protector has 230v 10A limit and if any of those of two goes above for too much time, it will trip its internal circuit breaker.

Aside from this, manufacturers do claim that the surge protector filters noise - it does since it consists of capacitors and ferrite-core coils - but in general it should have no impact on the appliances..
 

Ingenieur

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No, the PSU just blew due to an internal fault - shortcircuit - probably due faulty transformer which slowly burned away the isolation.

The concern was that such fault would not damage other appliances on the same power strip, or damage powerstrip itself. Cable near the carpet on fire is not a good prospect as well. So surge protector has 230v 10A limit and if any of those of two goes above for too much time, it will trip its internal circuit breaker.

Aside from this, manufacturers do claim that the surge protector filters noise - it does since it consists of capacitors and ferrite-core coils - but in general it should have no impact on the appliances..

I assume that it was on 10 A CB?
I use a Furman PST8, mostly for convenience and cable management.

I surge protector under some circumstances delay tripping of the branch CB. It provides an addition Z in the fault path that will dampen the rate of rise of the fault current.

The fault in your PSU was likely not instantaneous:
CB's have 2 response curves
Instantaneous or bolted
Time over current or long-time

A US 20A CB will carry 40 A 30* sec
100 A for 5 to 10 sec.
A lot can happen in 10 sec! Lol
 
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