Power Surge Protection in Your Home

Most of us think of our mains electricity as a steady supply of 240 volts, humming away behind the scenes and powering our appliances. While it may occasionally go off for emergency reasons, most of the time it’s providing a reliable, consistent and safe supply of electricity to our home.

What if I were to tell you that’s not the case at all; that our electricity supply is actually fluctuating all the time, producing spikes and sags that are slowly eating away at the sensitive electronic components in our appliances?

Power surges

Despite popular belief, a power surge is not always a massive electrical surge due to a lightning strike or a major power fluctuation. Power surges occur many times every day and are mostly very mild and very brief, usually only lasting nano-seconds.

The problem is that over time, all these little ‘attacks’ on your expensive electrical appliances add up, until one day they begin to malfunction or fail altogether.

Power surges can also damage light switches, power outlets and large electrical appliances such as fridges, washers and air conditioners, so without surge protection, the lifespan of practically everything you own is being gradually eroded.

Surge protection

Because of the general misconception about power surges, many people still don’t have surge protection in their homes. Although they’ve spent thousands on home theatre systems, wide screen tv’s and computers, they won’t spend a few dollars protecting that equipment, because they don’t realise that the threat is consistent and happening right under their noses.

Electrical experts recommend that we have a two-tiered system of protection; with a surge protector in the meter box, protecting the general household wiring from incoming surges on the mains line and individual surge protectors between each of our major appliances and the electrical outlets they plug into. In this way, by the time a surge reaches your appliances, it has hopefully either been weakened or diverted to ground by the combined action of both surge protectors.

Types of surge protectors

Point-of-use surge protectors usually come in box or strip form, with several outlets for plugging in different appliances. Some also have a plug for your telephone or modem. While they achieve similar results, surge protectors work in several different ways:

• The most common type use a metal oxide varistor (MOV) to divert surges to the earth or ground wire. However, the MOV degrades each time and will not last long (sometimes only one use).
• Another kind uses a gas discharge arrestor, where the gas only becomes conductive during surges and then diverts them to ground.
• A third type uses a silicon avalanche diode (SAD) to divert the surge to ground. It doesn’t provide the same level of protection as an MOV, but it also doesn’t degrade with each use and consequently lasts much longer.
• More expensive surge protectors can contain a combination of all three of these systems and may  employ a fuse as well.

The type of surge protection you opt for will depend on your budget and the cost of the equipment you are protecting. But regardless of your circumstances, unless you want a lot of costly repairs and replacements down the track, the time to get some form of surge protection is right now.