As per my training,
I'm told that there are two types of surge protection.
The first known as
coarse protection is fitted into a panel between the incoming Hot wire and Ground.
All these things do is "clamp" over-voltage events as they happen on the incoming mains.
However, they won't clamp everything that will damage sensitive electronic equipment.
For this you need
fine protection for your individual appliances.
One caveat though, most of the surge diverters I've installed here, have a consumable plug-in diverter module.
Now if that operates, it needs to be replaced otherwise you have no protection.
What I have done in the past, is installed a small alarm to the side of the panel, run off an auxillary contact on the side of the diverter module, if the diverter module trips, the alarm goes off and will beep until the module is replaced.
Some may say that that is rather heavy-handed, but at the end of the day, if people want protection, it needs to be
kept up to date, because if you have something like this installed and it trips, Murphy's Law says that you are more than likely to have a surge, between when it trips and when you replace the module.
