Bits and Bytes: Power Surges

By Steve Staves

    This past week we were all witness to the awesome power of a lightning storm.  The one down side to these storms is that electronic equipment is highly susceptible to power surges, spike and outages.  Power conditioning and backup is fast becoming a requirement for many sensitive electronic devices including computers. Many of the home backup power devices even include RJ jacks for network and/or modem protection.

Far too often, people will buy a “Power Bar” from a store and assume that they are protected from a lightning strike or a power surge.  Too often the resulting damage bears witness to the fallibility of that assumption. 

There are a few things all computer users should keep in mind when it comes to lightning strikes:

1.     Not only should you unplug your computer and peripherals during a storm, but make sure any telephone lines are unplugged from internal or external modems, etc.

2.     Unplug your cable line or ADSL phone line from your modem.

3.     Just turning off your computer is not enough.

How can you protect your investment?

1.     Buy a good UPS surge suppressor.  It needs to be able to handle blackouts, brownouts and dropouts as well as provide sufficient battery backup power for you to have enough time to power everything down.

·          Blackout  - Where power is lost completely.

·          Brownout - Where the voltage level is below the normal minimum level specified for the system.

·          Dropout - Where the loss of power is only momentary (milliseconds to seconds).

2.     A power bar IS NOT a surge suppressor.

3.     When you are hit by a lightning strike, replace your power bars and surge suppressors as they are typically designed to survive one hit only.  More sophisticated surge suppressors contain audible or visual alerts that they are past their usefulness.

4.     For some sense of security, consider purchasing a lightning arrestor and having it installed at the breaker box by a qualified electrician.

Good surge suppressors often come with a warranty BUT … You have to register the unit when you buy it.  The registration card that may tend to throw out basically means that you lose the warranty guarantee.  Spend the extra couple of hundred dollars to protect your equipment – You may one day be thankful that you did.

Steve Staves is the owner of Premier Computer Care Inc. You can reach him at www.pc-care.ca or by phone 250-562-2273 for more information about protecting yourself from power surges.

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