Why whole house surge protectors are not enough

@carlsbad2

Do whatever you’d like so long as you remain informed. :)

Personally, I don’t even want to LIFT the equipment off my rack, much less deal with insurance or replacements. :) Also, I run some nice PC’s here and don’t want them to fry with my data on them, same for my music collection.

Here on the SC coast I have underground power in my neighborhood but that doesn’t stop the power from glitching due to transformer and other power issues elsewhere. My surge protectors or UPS has to intervene about 3x a year even without lightning or known vehicular assaults on my gear. :)

As for the rest of the home, I have a lot of permanently attached devices besides major appliances such as automated lights, fire alarms and GFCI outlets.  I met a man a month ago or so whose home was struck and he lost his entire outdoor AC units.  No idea if a WHSP would have saved him, but just evidence that we are prone to that kind of damage here.

I have a Siemens that monitors the voltage from the breaker it’s good for around $6 years and the LEDs if they turn red it’s time to change or stopped a electrical surge 

it was under $300. And saved my $3500 OLED tvs and computers 

to me it was$$ well spent from my Audio I have a custom one my  AudioEngineer friend built for me as well as my 4 wire AWG 10 dedicated line with a common ground as well as a insulated isolated ground and it’s own dedicated Copper buzz bar and ground . Even with a audio computer I get very quiet black back grounds .

@audioman58  I have the same brand, but mine stop blinking and an audible alarm goes off.

Even so, their high clamping voltage is why I supplement those with point of use surge protectors.

I am looking for a  dedicated unit for my audio ,not quite sure maybe the                AQ Niagra 5000.

@erik_squires   +1

Clamping voltage increases with clamping current.  It can be 250Vpeak (line to neutral) at 1mA, but it will more than double at few thousand of amperes.  Surge current will be reduced by inductance of long power line, but not with close hit,  House wiring inductive reactance in combination with secondary protector will reduce peak voltage a bit more  (smaller voltage differential = lower surge current = lower clamping voltage) .  Strong secondary protection will always be better, but there is no excuse for not using any.

Eric mentioned in linked article, that huge number of joules is not needed.  If we assume huge 10kA surge current lasting 10us and 600V clamping voltage it will produce energy of 10kA x 600V x 10us = 60 joules.  Event is likely longer than 10us, more like 100us, but main energy peak is within 10us.  100 joule protector ought to do any job.  Even small, one outlet, Belkin absorber ($9 on Amazon) is listed at 885 joules total - 295 joules in each of 3 modes - much more than needed.