Surge Protection for Electronics - What works

[perry]

Many of you know that you should protect your computers and other things with a "good" surge protector.

What most of you don''t know is that the common surge protector that is available is based on a technology that gurantees their failure down the road, and decreases the protection offered as they age (every surge they handle usually reduces thier life and capacity).

I''ve had a few of these burn out already (ever seen a blown up surge protector).

Here is a company that sells surge protectors that really work - and that are not damaged by all the surges they absorb over the years.

Not cheap; but well worth it. Kinda like high qualtiy and properly cut diamonds

And for the Tech-Heads: A full explaination on why they work (and the problems with the others); complete with test results.

Oh, they also welcom questions...

www.brickwall.com

Hope this helps people.

Leonid; how well protected are your servers?

Perry

 

[strmrdr]

APC is the best we have never had a computer protected by one get zapped.
I cant say that any other brand.
Iv seen them melted to a crisp by a direct hit on the pole outside the building and the computers were fine.

 

[strmrdr]

http://www.apc.com/index.cfm?isoCountryCode=us

I wont use anything else on our clients or my own computers smart-ups for the servers and surge strips for the worstations and networking gear.

 

[perry]

Storm:

I am glad that you have not had any failures with APC.

Unfortunaltly, APC uses the same technology that most everyone else is. Perhaps they are a bit more robust than some of the others. But its the same technology; and those surge protectors that "tooK that lightning zap - may not take the next one because their protective elements degrad with each zap..

What Brickwall is selling is a completely different technology that puts the others to absolute shame as far as performance and abiltiy to handle suges without degradation.

Take some time to read the information on the site - they even link you to APC and other companies selling surge protectors so you can compare.

Kinda like someone showing up with a superideal cut diamond in most normal diamond stores. You can call both items diamonds; but you cant compare performance.

I wish you continued luck with your APC surge protectors. Me, I''ll be replacing mine in the near future.

What started me looking at surge protectors is that I''m looking at a new boiler - with lots of electronics and computer control (386 computer). Having the heat go out due to a surge would be more than a minor inconvience. Bound to happen when it''s less than zero arround here.


Perry

 

[strmrdr]

I read it and am familiar with the electrical aspects of both designs.

1: coils do not help with lightning surges they aren''t always AC and even if they are you can get an inductive kick from a coil that is several times the voltage of the original spike.
2: scr''s are cmos devices and they are sensitive to high voltage surges themselves.
3: scr''s switch slower than MOVs
4: surge strips should be replaced after they take a large hit even if they still work. With those Id do the same, if they survived the hit in the first place.
5: the technology they are talking about isn''t new I studied it in the early 90s in college and to the this day MOV''s are what is used instead of scr''s. One of my projects was the study of high voltage protection systems.

For multiple low voltage pulses in the AC range there is an advantage to non-MOV systems but when it come to high amplitude fast rising spikes caused by a lightning strike a MOV is the way to go.

 

[perry]

Storm:

So do you advise everone to change their surge protector after every lightning storm where the lights flicker in the area (even your APC surge protector - or after so many flickers?). Of course not; and people and companies wouldn''t do it anyway. Thus, eventually their common surge protector will almost always fail at some point.



Concerning the BrickWall system:

I think that we are talking about 2 different things:

Did you study this design in detail:

I agree that just using an inductor is not an answer by itself - otherwise Isolation transformers would have dominated as surge protectors.

The Brickwall has capacitors in line with the inductors - a ballanced RLC circuit. There is no - I repeat - No (Zero) switching time for most common spikes.

The result is that this circuit instantly clamps the voltage at a much lower level than MOV''s are capable of doing.

See the comparison here:

www.brickwall.com/oscope.htm

They then have more capacitors that can be switched on for really massive spikes; but have time to do that because of the existing - instantainious - inline circuits that are handling the start of the spike and limiting how fast the voltage rises; which also protects the Diode and SCR''s. MOV''s often let a lot more through before they switch on.

Keep in mind that most surges are caused by common turning on and off of things like Air conditioners and other appliances, and electrical distribution switching. Most lightning strikes on utility lines are shunted to ground via a utillity lightning arrester fast enough to limit the surge in a house to a reasonable level (the flickering of lights during storms). This is a routine level of common surges that most people don''t know about - and that degrade a MOV based system. This is also the type of surges that the Brickwall system nuetralizes up front.

However, a direct lighting strike on the conductor wires immediately arround the house are rare (between the house and utility transformer) - and very difficult to protect against with a surge protector - regardless of surge protector technology; you need a good lightning arrester at that point.


I agree with you that the idea is not really new: I remember when surge protectors first came out in the mid 80''s and some of the design debates at the time. MOV''s won out for common AC becuase they cheap and could be mass marketed to the public (would the public buy an expensive surge protector?). If I recall at the time SCR''s were very very pricy back then as well; so an assembly like what the brickwall is now offereing would have been much more expensive than what it is now (and brickwall is selling a simple 8 outlet surge protector at $299, whereas a "good" MOV based 6 outlet is in the range of $50 - $60).

I also agree that this would be harder to pull off for high voltage transmission and that the concept works much better for lower voltage systems such as 120 volts.

I suspose if you want the best of both worlds: Put in a Brickwall system, and then add the lessor expensive MOV technology. That way the MOV''s wont see anyting unless it is a massive surge - extending their life and allowing them to be ready for the "big one."

Perry

 

[lost on 5th]

i think storm is headed in the correct direction here. i didnt read in detail on the brick wall system, but the real must have for computer protection is "clean power" this is more that surge protection, it also covers power drops which are just as damaging.

APC''s UPS systems are the most common used from personal computers to midsize/large servers.

on my pc''s i run a small UPS which covers me against the biggest urban power problem (brownouts and power drop).

for my legal, financial, and tech clients... their IT usually includes a larger APC UPS system depending on the number of racks in the server room.

large corporations and our mission critical facilities (new york board of trade, deutsche bank, fannie mae, etc) all require custom built UPS power systems to ensure trading floors and data banks are not impacted.

 

[strmrdr]

Perry,
An scr system is decent as a power conditioning device but less than optimal in dealing with a lightning strike.
A mov based system isnt that great as a power conditioning device but is the best available for dealing with a lightning strike.

switching power supplies which all computer supplies are these days and most others are too deal well with low aplitude slow rise spikes caused by things like motors starting and the like.


power isolation is even better than scr''s at power conditioning which is what the smart-ups does.
It converts the 110 AC to 48v dc using a switching power supply then coverts the 48v dc back to 110v ac.
That is the best conditioning you can get these days.
BUT they use MOVs in front of the supply to protect from lightning strikes.

Its really 2 different things, conditioning vs protection.