| You need surge protection! |
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| Written by Arthur Dellea | |
| Monday, 04 August 2008 | |
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Another summer of wicked thunder storms... This has been another bad summer filled with electrical surges. Over the past couple of months, I've had a dozen or so on-site calls where people's computers and peripherals were damaged from surges. A few of them had dead power supplies, some were fried dial-up modems, a couple were dead printers, all due to electrical surges! Computer equipment is especially sensitive to power fluctuations on your electrical wires and outlets. Many rural residents around here are still using dial-up internet connections, because Verizon and Time Warner have chosen to forsake our area where broadband internet is concerned. Dial-up modems are probably the most sensitive of all computer components, and surges over the phone lines can easily fry their circuits. Where do electrical surges come from? Well, for the most part, here in Massachusetts USA many of the surges are from thunder storms. From mid-spring through mid-fall, our area can get hammered with thunder storms. This year happened to be the 10 year anniversary of the tornado that blew through here in 1998, which started somewhere in Upstate New York, heading east through Egremont, Great Barrington, New Marlborough and Monterey. Fortunately we don't get tornadoes here very often, but this summer we've had some very extreme storms, similar to the summer when the tornado went through. High humidity and contrasting fronts can generate a lot of energy in thunder storms. High winds, heavy rains, hail and the like can wreak havoc on the phone and power feeds coming into our homes. Most often in our rural areas, trees and large branches that break off during these storms are the culprits that knock out our phone and power lines. How can thunder storms damage my computer? Most of the time lightning strikes near your home can damage your computer and other electrical devices. The massive volume of electricity in a single lightning strike is enough to power a small to mid-sized town, but it's completely uncontrollable and unpredictable. The most common way that this stray electricity enters your home is over your AC electrical wires, antennas, cable TV wires, and yes, your telephone wires, outside and then into your home. In fact, a thunder storm could be a dozen miles away from you, yet still zap all kinds of devices in your home, because the excess current easily travels for miles over power and telephone lines. So, just because a storm cell happens to be several miles away does not mean that your equipment is not in danger. Can power surges be caused by things other than storms? Sure they can! I can think of several examples. Let's say there aren't even any storms within 100 miles of your home. But, a car accident happens down the street, and the car knocks down a telephone pole and all the wires with it, that could be more than enough to create spikes, surges, brownouts or complete power and phone outage at your home. Summer time is the most common time for the electrical and phone companies to work on repairing, expanding, and upgrading their lines and networks, and when they switch them on and off or switch between feeds, this can also cause surges on the lines. Also, summer is much more hectic where the power company is concerned, because so many people over-use their air conditioners, which puts plenty of strain on the power grid, transformers and the like, causing brownouts and spikes. A good rare example of another surge for you: a couple of summers ago, the transformer on a pole up the road short-circuited and burst into flames! It not only knocked out the power for everyone on our road, it also sent a massive surge down the wires, which killed the power supplies in a couple of my computers! How can I protect my computer equipment from power and phone line surges? There are basically two kinds of devices that can protect your equipment... The more common and often less expensive is the surge strip. Not just any surge strip will do! Many of my customers have made the mistake of connecting their $1000 computer equipment to a $10 generic power strip. These cheap power strips might be fine for desk lamps, power tools, or Christmas lights, but they are not suited for protecting sensitive computer equipment! A good surge rotector will cost you $30 or more, unless it's on sale, and it will have a Joule rating. Joules are used to show how much of a surge a surge strip can take. I suggest a bare minimum rating of 1000 Joules to protect computer equipment, the more the better, but higher the cost. Also, people who use dial-up internet should definitely buy a surge strip that has built-in phone line protection. For these, you connect the phone wire from the wall jack into the “in” phone jack on the surge strip, then you connect another phone wire from the “out” phone jack on the strip to the “in” phone jack of your dial-up modem. This will protect your dial-up modem from almost any level of phone line surges. The more expensive option is an Uninterrupted Power Supply (a.k.a. UPS). A UPS is a battery backup unit, which can continue to power your equipment for several minutes even if the power goes out, giving you time to save what your working on and safely power off your computer. I use UPS units for all of my computer equipment. A UPS smooths out the AC power to all of the devices connected to it. If you get a power surge, it will kick over to battery power until the surge passes. If you get a brownout or complete power outage, it will kick over to battery power until the normal power level resumes. Most UPS units have two kinds of outlets, some are marked “battery” and some are marked “surge only”, it's important that your computer, monitor, and external backup drive for example, be connected to the plugs marked “battery”, because they offer the best protection and will give you time to save and turn off the computer during a complete outage. Again, just like the surge strips, if you use dial-up internet, most UPS units have phone line protection as well, and I definitely urge you to connect your phone lines through the unit to your computer, as I described previously. UPS units come with a VA rating (a.k.a. Volt-Amps). A UPS that's rated for 350 to 500 VA is usually more than enough to protect one standard desktop computer setup, and should give you a few minutes to turn your equipment off safely. For higher-end gaming machines, workstations, and servers, 700 VA or much more is usually needed. A VA rating below 350 VA would be better for protecting laptops and notebooks. The higher the VA rating, the more expensive. And finally, when choosing either a surge strip or UPS unit, you need to pick one with enough outlets to accommodate all of your computer devices. Most UPS units don't have enough plugs to connect everything, in this case, I would suggest that you get both a UPS unit and a good surge strip. You should connect your computer, monitor, and important devices like an external backup drive to the UPS, then the rest of your devices to the surge strip. “Daisy-chaining”, or plugging the surge strip into the UPS, is normally not recommended, although I've done that with my own equipment with success, I don't recommend you to do that on your own, better let me or another expert come on-site and figure out the best way to connect and protect your devices. Here are some examples of good surge strips... Here are some examples of good UPS units...
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| Last Updated ( Sunday, 03 August 2008 ) |
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