Why do we need surge and lightning protection?
In business insurance today it is clear that profitability is directly related to the efficiency and reliability of our electronic systems. Reliability of these systems is directly and often catastrophically affected by poor quality of your supply power. Surges, under and over-voltage conditions, including dips or sags, swells, brownouts and Blackouts all negatively impact our supply power quality causing computer malfunction and loss of data. Surges may occur at levels ranging from a few Amps to several thousands of Amps and are caused by incidents such as lightning, electrostatic discharge, excessive grid loading, and switching of heavy loads to name a few. It is considered good practice to take a holistic view of power quality when designing a power protection system and in light of this it would be safe to state that surge protection forms a critical component.
While the fitting of surge protectors on a main supply board is no longer obligatory, we recommend that for peace of mind and protection of sophisticated electronic equipment used in both home and office that proper surge protections is fitted on both the live and neutral connection entering the mains board.
Who is affected by lightning?
Lightening and density maps from the CSIR shows that every one in South Africa is affected by lighting.
How does lighting affect my house hold and business equipment?
- Galvanically coupled surge voltages
Lightning can enter your installation via power lines Etc, once the energy has entered your installation, it will always find the shortest path to earth and that will be via your equipment, this will almost always result in damage to your equipment.
- Induced surges
When lightning strikes an object, the high currents cause an electromagnetic field to form, this electromagnetic field can induce surges into your electrical equipment, this is very often the case if you get a lighting strike close to your installation.
- Potential difference
This is the most common cause of lighting damage, when lightning strikes a structure or the ground, the energy moves through the surrounding earth, but because of the resistance in the earth the further the energy travels the weaker the energy gets, but if the energy finds your electronic equipment connected by copper cables the energy will find it easier to move through the cables as the resistance is lower than that of the ground until it finds another earth point, then equalization will occur causing damage to your equipment.
