Surge protector woes

[dj1701]

I was not home when it happened, but my girlfriend was. It was day with really high winds. She said the lights in the bedroom got really bright and she heard a pop. Thats when several breakers were tripped. The light bulbs in the bedroom were blown out.

If it was a big surge, why did it not smoke the other surge protector strips in the house?

Something is not right for sure.

 

[robstaples]

Hard to tell after the fact. Tripped breakers indicate high current and long duration as breakers trip on heat generated ( most common breakers) versus micro second impulse. Speculation, the ones that smoked could have been enough to suppress the wave or they aren’t functional, or something else. Sorry no help.

If this happens again, utilities have recording meters they can install and “ watch” the line for trouble.

 

[woody]

was the tripped breakers on the same buss bar or maybe every other breaker?

 

[LittleBill21]

yea, I use cyberpower for years. MOV's are what protect you from surges, not circuit breakers, that breaker is simply for amp pulling by devices. mov are sacrificial once they are gone that's it, you don't reset them, they burn up to protect the devices downstream. that's why there are lights on them, if the light goes out, that's actually bad, it means it did not stop the full surge, you should have one on your utility box as well, I have a large leviton one.

contrary to believe, a UPS does nothing more then a normal surge protector, all it does is switch over to battery due to flucatitions, it still has MOV's like a regular surge strip that can burn out.

You clearly have a power problem, I believe they did their job, I would be curious why the other ones are not burning out. BRIGHT lights is a real bad sign.

 

[zzvyb6]

Found out (lucky for me) that the voltage problem I found in the house & barn (separate pole transformers) was faulty neutral connections at the poles. One day my Kill-A-Watt registered 580 Volts at the 110 outlets. Root cause (according to DTE power company) was the addition of a new neighborhood down the road which required a primary voltage increase from 4600V to 7600. (don't ask me why the ratio is odd, no idea). The old neutral bus on my poles melted off. Not sure why the neutral would go, but it's also related to "old grounding rods that no longer serve their purpose".

I had an In-Wall surge protector which started to emit a burning smell. My FLIR camera 'saw' this: (good thing I was home. A Neighbor's home down the road burned to the ground. They saw the smoke rising from the expressway on the way home from work).

I would advise against using fixed installation surge protectors and park the extension cord versions on a fireproof surface. I'm using old slate shingles for this now. I still wonder how they handle a lightning strike. We no longer have close ones ever since I put up a few old farm windmills on the property (just for their looks).

 

[kenmbz]

A good whole house surge protector in a proper metal housing is what I have.
We get these power "events" when Ash trees fall on the wires.
Sometime lights go bright and then dim or flicker.
I only had to replace one surge protector so far.
Had a few GFI outlets and breakers trip during these events.

Voltage needs to be clamped, or you will keep burning the little surge protectors.

 

[check]

I had a whole house surge protector, and it saved my circuitry when lightning struck a pole about 200 feet away. It sacrificed itself, and I did have to get a new one, but that is how it works. Put the same surge protector in again.

Mind you, I didn’t do it right away like I should have, and we had several of those weird power outages where the power flashes on and off before finally going out. And then my garage door opener stopped working properly!

Bad James!

 

[cqaigy2]

Those are useless. Get a whole house surge suppressor. and add a good UPS device with surge suppression for desktop computer.

i use a siemens whole house that gives 140,000 amp protection. Not cheap, but thats the idea.View attachment 784150

How many "hits" can this take?

 

[grsthegreat]

If lights go super bright…..suspect dropped or loose neutral wires. Seen it so many times.

 

[cqaigy2]

I have not insight to what happened in the OPS instance.

My BIL and sister, had a house outside Enumclaw. They would get high winds that would whip the high tension power lines and sometimes they'd hit the lower voltage lines. That caused interesting issues in their home. Arcing that would start across the outlets then travel down to the floor. Some circuits stopped working altogether, blown up electronic/electric appliances.