Do surge protectors really work?

With everything getting more expensive these days, you want to be sure your costly electronics stay protected. One of the most common ways is to plug them all into a surge protector. The question is: Do these things really work? The answer is, as usual: It's complicated! Join me for a look at 3 different types/levels of surge suppressors, how these gizmos really work, and how best to protect your techie goodies from unfortunate zaps.

Goodies in the Vid (some affiliate links):

[mariajosemorante]

Very illuminating, THANKS! I am in Spain and we recently had a "sobretension" that actually melted the 4 phase neutral cable from the street. We lost our air conditioners, fridge, and stove extractor, and nothing else. Neighbor lost her coffee maker and everyone in our 3 floor building lost their air conditioners. Took us a month to get everything repaired. Amazingly, none of my computer gear was damaged and it's not on a surge protector. IIUC, laptop power bricks are all protected. Apparently my powers supply in my desktop machine has built in protection. I'm a freelance product designer / 3D modeler and it would have been awful had my machines been toast like our appliances. Great video.

[ericv]

My surge protector protects my computer from direct meteor strikes. It's that good.

The anti-tamper screws are mandated by a few laws to prevent laymen inserting fingers where there could be lethal ammounts of angy electrons.
You will find them in most things powered by mains voltages.

The GDT can take many blows and keep on protecting up to tripping main fuses in the pamel.


There are newer din-rail mounted ZNRs that need just the actuall varistor replaved and it's like a cartrige, very nice.

My only problem with commercial surge protectors is that they are triggering too high.

There are alternatives to varistors that can take several surges without needing replacement but they would cost more to make and surely they'd be retailed at +10x the manufacturing price.
I'm reffering to GDT+TVS (even +ZNRs, some capacitors and inductors)

[rodmanbrutus]

I would like to take a moment and say I do enjoy the fact that we are focusing on the most miniscule of search protectors being type 3 when you should be going over the more important search protectors like type 1 and type 2

[glynnetolar]

Thank you. I've been saying this for years how these things kind of help but you'll never know when they don't.

[grayrabbit]

Living in Florida all my life, I've lost plenty of equipment over the years. NONE of it over the powerlines. ALL of it due to EMP. Usually something with an RF section goes deaf, despite powering up.

At one of my jobs, a transmitter tower took a direct lightning hit to the actual antenna. We found the radiating elements melted, in the parking lot below. Lightning hit that, blew straight down through the Heliax into the ground. In the doghouse, ALL of the surge protectors of multiple brands were actually exploded, leaving shit stains and shrapnel everywhere. Surprisingly, connecting the transmitters up to dummy loads, they still worked fine! We cobbled together some temporary antennas with scrap metal and ran some dodgy coax up the tower.

[CharlieRAnimaMX]

Apparently one of the Reasons the APC is a Strong Knox and that some manufacturers prevent it from being opened. It's because APC offers several hundred dollar damage insurance on products attached to their protection bars. so I assume it must be in part to prevent someone from tampering with the circuit to cause a catastrophic failure and collect insurance or after a current spike someone tries to repair (some apc products do not have screws but ultrasonic welding throughout the body to prevent fixing or tamper) [and if someone repair or tamper don't try to collect insurance later]

however it could also be a matter of patents, in an easy attempt to obfuscate someone else from copying the design (something I myself, EEE Degree admit to having tried once out of curiosity to know how the faulty wiring detection mechanism [Site Wiring Fault] indicator works which was supposed to be an APC exclusive feature). and try to DIY

- Although Surge Protectors are not much in general, APC power strips have several interesting components to do reverse engineering. For example, I have seen bars that, in addition to the MOVs, also use thermomagnetic switches to limit current thermic fuses, Transistor/resistor Arrangements for protection and basically the site Wiring fault detector. air gaps to hi/lo voltage protection and as a last barrier they use fuse tracks on the PCBs, so presumably they made power strips with sufficient Forensic evidence of what happened in case someone wants to collect insurance against damages. or sue APC [Something that has happened in a certain way in the past since there was a time when due to design flaws their surge protectors and some UPS melted or caught fire which led them to have government recalls for the US CPSC].
However, there are also some engineering decisions by APC that at the time of doing this reverse engineering are questionable and could even be on purpose or as a means of "safe planned obsolescence" so that their product fails intentionally or behaves differently. destructive way before a failure but does not correspond to a topic of dangerous intentional damage.

[THX..]

I just lost 2 TVs that were not surge protected. Other TVs and electronics that were surge protected are fine....So I'd say I agree don't expect miracles, but a few cheap surge protectors are well worth the effort.

[ChaplainDaveSparks]

One good reason for a circuit breaker on *ANY* power strip is to protect the device and the cord, especially in the event that it is plugged into a 20 amp circuit but is only capable of handling 16 amps, or anything below 20 amps.

[tommycollier]

They are called tamper proof screws, enjoyed your tutorial Thanks for sharing

[alexfischer]

Thanks for breaking this topic down. Big fan of your videos, thanks for all you do!

[adamgronski]

Hi, in most cases they put GDT in, before varistor, so the varistor isn't constantly under load. This way varistor won't deteriorate as quick and surge protection device will last for longer.

[rodmanbrutus]

Electrician checking in. I would like to chime in and say that NO, using a type 3 surge protector plug into your room will not protect everything on that circuit.

Ultimately that plug will protect everything down stream.

To the guy who made the video, I would be more than happy to explain If your curious.

[chris-]

That's a great explanation! For some reason, my computer power supply only lasts a year before dying. 2 have died on me so far, and they're high-end Seasonic models, not some cheap knockoffs. I just bought Schneider's APC and my third power supply. Hopefully, there will be no more issues. Thanks for the video!

[borisjevic]

A little late to the party, but the one with the fuses, they are there so cut the electricity off in case the Varistors conduct or the GDT continuously, so that will make the fuse blow and cut the power and the condition that caused it.
Hope that helps for the people wondering why the last power board had so many fuses. The resettable fuse normally is your normal size as per your countries regulations, while the others that were soldered in, those are slightly larger and trigger when there is a major fault, of which the resettable fuse will NOT catch.
Else, this was a great video.
Take care everyone.

[Togtwo]

Have you done a video yet comparing a surge protector vs a surge arrester???

[bradkaral]

Really thorough and well-done. Would you explain how plugging in a surge protector protects every device on the same circuit? What are your thoughts about the Tripp Lite ISOBars?

[StellarStoic]

Love your Slovenian cup 🤗 Cheers from Slovenia

[molotov]

This man is so strong he can crack open the surge protectors with the security screws in them using his bare hands.

[qq]

18:14 wrong 1. You don't get more then 400V in a 230V 3 phase system. It's easy to calculate: 230V x √3 = ~400
2. Of course they protect you from high voltage due to loosing the neutral (or incompetent and negligent workers at the electrician company). And no, they don't have to last for hours.
They have to last (e.g. for a 230V system) exactly 0.2 seconds and they easily do that. That's the longest time the circuit breaker may need to cut the power in case of a short circuit.