How prevalent is the use of switch-board mounted surge/spike diverters,in your country?.
A brilliant thunderstorm last night, made me wonder.
Over here,they are just starting to be utilised, as people are looking to protect their computers and other sensitive equipment,against lightning damage.
Another advantage of installing these devices, is that incandescent and Halogen lamps,tend to last a lot longer,because of the minimised occurrence of voltage spikes.
Your input please.

Have never seen them. Always run to pull plugs when we've got lightning. There are surge-protected power strips, but I don't know if they're trustworthy.

Interesting that you should bring this subject up, Trumpy. It is often debated in the technical newspaper here. It's repetedly stressed that plug-in surge protectors won't protect you from lightning strikes.

Instead they recommend the panel mounted ones you describe, combined with a lightning conductor and an earth electrode consisting of a buried copper wire going around the whole building. Lightning conductors have "always" been common in the countryside here. However, I think the surge protectors are still very rare. (I have never seen nor heard of one in real life)

Here they are starting to be used especially in offices where PCs have to be protected.
I have gone to a manufacturer's demo and they explained that it's a combination of a whole system working together. The ones in the panel "kill" the big peaks and the strips or ones which you put in the plug are to kill the smaller peaks.

>The ones in the panel "kill" the big peaks and the strips
>or ones which you put in the plug are to kill the smaller peaks.

This sounds sensible since smaller peaks can originate within the house.

Yeah, some points, here, I have installed three of these such devices, since posting the topic.
I don't really like the idea of running around to quickly unplug everything in the event of a thunder-storm.
These units that I was talking about, fit neatly into a DIN Rail type switchboard, with a link out of the load side of the main switch and into the diverter unit, from there, I normally run a 16mm2 wire to the Earth Busbar, short as possible.
People are slowly starting to realise over here that something can be done to protect their expensive computer equipment, and with our large number of lines still not under-grounded, this is very cheap insurance.

in the US, we've many variety of surge suppression, some are in the shape of circuit breakers, some are pigtailed....

Sparky, how are your surge diverters hooked
up in the US?.

Sparky, how are your surge diverters hooked
up in the US?.


[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 11-08-2002).]