SURGE PROTECTION
Power Surges
When most homeowners think of power surges, they picture large blasts of electricity, usually resulting from lightning strikes, damaged power lines, or malfunctioning transformers. While these dramatic events are the most obvious cause of surges, the truth is that your home experiences smaller, low-voltage surges every day. This can be damaging your home’s electronic devices.
At Safe and Sound Electric, we have helped our customers to protect their homes from surge-related damage since 2012. We hire fully trained, highly skilled electricians that understand that pleasing our customers is our first priority.
With our emphasis on continued training, our technicians are well-versed in the latest surge protection techniques and technologies.
Causes of Power Surges
Lightning strikes and power line issues make up only a small portion of the surges that affect your home daily. Most surges carry lower power loads and last for such a short amount of time that you likely will not even notice them.
However, these small surges can cause a lot of damage. Any electronic equipment that is not protected against surges can be harmed by these frequent small surges.
Unlike a catastrophic surge, in which the damage is immediate and observable, small surges gradually deteriorate your electronics, leading to costly repairs or even replacements.
There are a wide variety of causes behind power surges apart from major events like transformer issues and lightning strikes. These include:
- Circuit breakers that trip
- Inductive voltage spikes
- Unplanned power outages
- Rolling blackouts
- Operating multiple large electric appliances on a single power line
- Supply malfunctions from the power company
These are just a few of the ways that your electrical system could experience a power surge. From overloading a circuit with multiple devices to simply switching on your vacuum cleaner, your electronic devices are at risk of damage without proper surge protection.
How Does Whole-Home Surge Protection Work?
As electronic devices became more common, the initial solution was to plug them into surge protection power strips. These strips were plugged into your outlet, promising to keep your electronics safe by cutting off any power before it could reach your devices. However, not all strips were created equal, and even the best power strip would fail over time.
Whole-home surge protection, on the other hand, is installed directly into your home’s power system, protecting your home from power surges from a central location. These surge protection devices, or SPDs, can protect your power system from both the dramatic, large-scale surges associated with lightning and the smaller surges that course through your home every day.
Whole-home surge protection works by shunting increased levels of voltage away from your electrical system, instead directing it towards a ground wire, where it can disperse harmlessly. Our SPDs contain metal oxide varistors, which are electrical components designed to block excessive voltage, keeping it from entering your power system.
Most surges happen quickly, which is why our whole-home surge protection is designed to react in less than a nanosecond. Once the power surge has ended, your SPD will bring your home’s power supply back to normal, with the entire process typically taking only a few seconds at most.
At Safe and Sound Electric, our technicians have experience in installing whole-home surge protection devices throughout lower Fairfield County. We will make sure that your home stays protected against sudden increases in voltage throughout your power system, so you can rest assured that your electronic devices will be safe.
Benefits of Whole-Home Surge Protection
If you are trying to decide whether whole-home surge protection will be right for you, consider the following advantages that these systems can provide:
Protecting Sensitive Electronics
For most homeowners, surge protection is about protecting computers, phones, tablets, and other computing devices. This makes sense, since our lives revolve around the information stored on these devices, and we use them extensively in our everyday lives.
However, even standard appliances like refrigerators, washing machines, and others are powered by sophisticated circuitry. This means that equipment is also sensitive to power surges, making whole-home surge protection even more important.
Limiting Large and Small Power Surges
You never know where lightning is going to strike, but you can be sure that your home will experience up to 50 micro-surges per day. When you install whole-home surge protection, you can be sure that your home is protected against power spikes from both of these sources.
Increasing Efficiency of Other SPDs
As homeowners are installing more and more electronic equipment, you may find that you want to add surge protection to your home, especially if you have a large amount of technical equipment.
When you add circuit protection to your outlets, in addition to your whole-home surge protection system, you will ensure that you are covered no matter how big a surge might be.
Professional Electrician Near Me
When you are looking for surge protection in Riverside or the surrounding areas, make Safe and Sound Electric your first call. We are committed to helping our customers to get the electrical solutions that they need to maintain a safe, steady power supply.
Contact us today for more information or to schedule an appointment to install your whole-home surge protection equipment.
Hear from another of our happy customers
I’ve found them to always be reliable, trustworthy, and they do excellent work. I’ve used them time and again and I recommend them to everyone.”
– 5 Star Review by John D.