Surge Protection - [RE-wrenches]

Darryl Thayer daryl_solar at yahoo.com
Fri Aug 4 23:35:40 PDT 2006


HI Barbra, good question as usual.  I think that
over/under voltage can be very hard on inverters,
particularly if the voltage rises and falls repeatly. 
And I agree this seems to be much more prevelent in
more distant areas.  However most surge protectors
only prevent overvoltage (for example a 120 volt surge
arrester only "clips" above 300 volts.  So the line
sags and climbs that occur due to line load would not
be protected againts.  

The utility has voltage correctors that are buck boost
transformers with automatically adjusting taps.  By
these taps load is followed, but changes in load can
result in short term over and under voltage of
hopfully only a few volts.
Darryl  

--- Barbra Kerr <bkerr at energy-exchange.org> wrote:

> 
> 
> Wrenches -
> 
> I am beginning to think that
> recommending/installaing Whole house surge
> protectors may assist with some of our problem calls
> where utility voltage
> has been high from time to time and/or the area is
> apt to experience
> black/brown outs, causing an internal fuse (not the
> GFDI) to blow on our
> older inverters.  Is there anyone out there that has
> a habit of doing this
> and/or an opinion one way or the other?  Also, I
> have seen in the last 2-3
> weeks (when everyone was using AC at peak time) that
> we have an unusually
> high call rate and all problems are on the AC side,
> especially in areas
> where there have been black/brown outs. We lost 2
> inverters (internal
> circuit board failure), can't help but wonder if the
> utility surges caused
> the loss. 
> 
> Thanks in adavnce
> 
> Barbra K. Kerr
> President
> Stellar Power & Heating
> 1-800-886-2258
> 209-586-9607 Fax
> 858.337.5097 cell
> 
> 
> [Non-text portions of this message have been
> removed]
> 
> 
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