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March 2, 2005 Protect Against Surges, Spikes and More Electrical power from most local utilities is quite reliable, but natural and man-made events can produce electrical surges and spikes that could create problems with your computer and other electronic equipment such as stereo systems and home theaters. What can you do to help protect your equipment against damage caused by these potential problems? Read on: First, some helpful definitions: An electrical spike (may also be referred to as transients or noise) is a sudden, short increase in voltage. Spikes may measure hundreds to a thousand or more volts (house voltage is normally 115-120 volts) and is usually of very short duration, generally micro- or milliseconds. Spikes may occur singly or in groups. An electrical surge or sag is a less dramatic rise or fall of 10 to 20 volts or more in line voltage and usually lasts a few tenths of a second to a few seconds. The familiar brownout is an electrical under-voltage lasting seconds to hours. EMI (electromagnetic interference) and RFI (radio frequency interference) are usually continuous streams of oscillating electrical spikes of lower intensity. Lightning strikes, even miles away, may cause electrical spikes to be carried into your home via power lines, phone lines or TV cables. These spikes can adversely affect the operation of your computer and other electronic equipment by damaging sensitive circuitry such as integrated circuits or memory chips. The result can be unreliable operation or complete component or system failure. Damage may be cumulative. Storms may result in sudden total loss of power, and human error may cause dangerous over-voltage to your house’s electrical circuits (we’ve had one such encounter). Electrical spikes can also be caused by electric utility company power switching equipment, heavy electrical equipment fed by the substation to which you’re connected, and even by electrical equipment in your own home such as pump motors, furnaces, refrigerators, air conditioners and such. EMI and RFI can cause erratic operation of sensitive electrical circuits, including computers, and can be carried in on power lines or even induced in peripheral equipment data cables. EMI and RFI may come from a variety of sources such as faulty fluorescent lights, dimmer switches or even nearby radio transmission towers. To protect your computer and other electronic devices such as VCRs, stereo equipment and TVs, we strongly recommend connecting these devices to the power line through a surge suppressor. Surge Suppressors are relatively inexpensive and protect by absorbing the electrical spikes. Good units cost from $50 up, and are cheap insurance against equipment damage. The energy these suppressors are able to dissipate is rated in Joules, and a 600+ Joule rating is suggested for best protection. Another rating is the maximum spike current. Look for ratings 80,000 amps or better. Most better units include EMI and RFI filtering. Also, if your computer is connected to the Internet via phone line or TV cable, be sure to choose a surge suppressor that has phone line and/or TV cable protection as well.
The new Centra Power Blocker 2 resettable Surge Protector (Newpoint, $69.99 and up) is a well designed all-in-one protector with advanced features such as active circuit breaker technology that disconnects protected equipment in 2 milliseconds in the event of voltage surges, including lightning strikes. A push of the reset button, and the unit will continue to protect against surges (some other manufacturers’ surge protectors protect by self-destructing with a voltage surge). The Joule equivalent using Newpoint’s technology is virtually unlimited. The unit is housed in a stylish silver case with eight protected AC sockets, two protected I/O TV cable connections and a protected phone line connection and advanced EMI/RFI power line filtering. The price includes a $1 million dollar connected equipment warranty. To protect your computer from data loss in the event of total power failure, consider connecting your computer to a UPS (uninterruptible power supply). A UPS contains rechargeable batteries, and in the event of power loss, the device automatically switches to the batteries. The batteries are used to power a special circuit to convert the direct current of the batteries to the alternating current normally used by the computer, monitor, printer and other accessories. A UPS is capable of powering your system for several minutes--long enough for you to save any valuable data or documents you are working on, and then correctly shut down your computer. For the average home user, we recommend a quality surge protector. A UPS may not be as necessary, depending on how you value the type of work you do. For the SOHO (small office, home office) we recommend both a surge protector and a UPS. Don’t forget to include power line surge protection for any peripherals connected to the computer, such as printers, monitors, scanners, phone or cable modems and the like, and be sure to include the phone lines and fax machine. That said, we still strongly recommend regularly backing up your important data and occasionally backing up your entire computer. And keep your backups in a safe place, away from your computer. Regular backups are the best insurance of all against a catastrophic event. |
