Surge Protection
Unexpected power surges can be devastating to both your customer's home and business life. Installing surge protection devices prevents and stops damage before it even happens.
Why Install Surge Protection?
Early electric equipment was quite large and was not easily damaged by electrical surges. As new products were developed, their size and internal circuits became smaller and smaller, resulting in increased potential for surge damage. Today, surge protection is important because our homes and businesses contain a large number of sensitive appliances that are at risk for damage from surges.
Most surges don’t cause immediate equipment damage or failure. However, they can result in additional wear and tear on electrical circuits inside sensitive equipment and can lead to early equipment failure. We call this “electronic rust” and have seen results of this in test labs.
Most people don’t realize that surges can enter a piece of equipment a number of ways. If you protect only the electric supply, then surge energy can enter via the antenna or cable TV wire. It can also enter via the telephone cable on modems, fax machines or computers. We recommend that you build a “wall” of protection by making sure that all external wires pass through the suppressor.
When describing the effects of lightning, we use the analogy of a rock being dropped into a calm pool of water. You will see the waves ripple away from the point that the rock enters the water. For a lightning strike to a nearby tree, the electrical energy radiates from the point of the strike until it dissipates just like the waves in the previous example. If the electrical wave hits a ground conductor that, as an example, is only connected to the TV cable entering the home, then surge energy can enter your home via the cable and pass through your television or DVR as it finds its way to the electrical ground. A similar situation can happen with your telephone cable. Either way, there is a high risk for damage to your equipment. If all grounds are bonded together, there is no ability for current to flow up one conductor and out the other conductor.
Remember that years ago, single point grounding was less important because customers did not have televisions, computers or gaming systems connected across two different utility systems. Newer equipment is plugged across two (or even three for small dish satellite video system) different wiring systems. A tiered system of surge protection is the best way to protect your electronics.
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