Simple power strips/conditioners?

[sandyk]

3 hours ago, Jud said:

That sort of thing. So (hopefully) never having to think about or replace the ZeroSurge appealed to me, even at the price.

https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/do-surge-protectors-merely-give-us-a-false-sense-of-security-566830/7/

This description of a Zero Surge  raises a lot more questions than answers for me.
How does it safely dissipate a sudden HUGE amount of energy like from a nearby lightning strike ?

I have seen even an underground phone cable vaporised, and stove elements damaged  (the stove wasn't in use at the time) by a lightning strike across the road at a public swimming pool.

 

Quote

You could replace your MOV based surge protectors with a Series-Mode Power Filter which is basically a heavy duty low pass filter filtering
anything faster than 60 Hz (i.e., noise, spikes, transients and/or surges). It works by slowing the surge down in real-time,
storing it as energy in capacitor banks and slowly bleeding it onto the Neutral wire a few volts at a time until the surge is gone.
 No Ground contamination, No MOV's to wear out, no need for annual replacements.

 

[Jud]

26 minutes ago, sandyk said:

https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/do-surge-protectors-merely-give-us-a-false-sense-of-security-566830/7/

This description of a Zero Surge  raises a lot more questions than answers for me.
How does it safely dissipate a sudden HUGE amount of energy like from a nearby lightning strike ?

I have seen even an underground phone cable vaporised, and stove elements damaged  (the stove wasn't in use at the time) by a lightning strike across the road at a public swimming pool.

 

Our power locally comes to the house through underground lines that originate from a transformer box set on the ground between our house and our neighbors'.

 

A little less than two years ago, lightning made a direct strike on the transformer box, perhaps 30 meters or less from the house. It was interesting to see the utility people come with breakers to replace those that had blown, and then shake their heads as they realized the transformer itself had literally melted.

 

Meanwhile, inside the house, the only thing I lost was one of my routers, on the separate circuit where my AV equipment is also. That's when I got the ZeroSurge for that equipment. Perhaps we'll get to see how effective it is, though I hope not.

[Mike Rubin]

1 hour ago, sandyk said:

https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/do-surge-protectors-merely-give-us-a-false-sense-of-security-566830/7/

This description of a Zero Surge  raises a lot more questions than answers for me.
How does it safely dissipate a sudden HUGE amount of energy like from a nearby lightning strike ?

I have seen even an underground phone cable vaporised, and stove elements damaged  (the stove wasn't in use at the time) by a lightning strike across the road at a public swimming pool.

 

 

That thread is terrifying.  There clearly is no orthodoxy on this topic.  Might as well do without any conditioning and surge protection after reading all that. 

 

Before I started this topic I never had heard about whole house protectors. Looking at the Home Depot site, almost none of them costs as much as the cable a lot of people use to connect an LPS to a component.  I am expecting an electrician out here in the next month or so.   A whole house protector might be a cheap enough solution for surges in a locale like mine, where most power surges come from the power coming back on after a failure rather than lightning. 

 

That leads me back to the original point of this post.  If I decide just not to worry about the surge protection, do I get enough power line cleansing and audible improvement from something like the small conditioners discussed in this thread to justify the prices or do I just need a decent power strip? 

[Ralf11]

You might just need a decent power strip.  You would have to either measure noise at your AC outlet, or buy an isolation transformer or even a big fancy balanced supply then do a blinded listening test to be sure.

 

How much are you willing to spend to find out?  A Topaz can be had for about $600 - if no improvement then you can easily sell it.

 

But your question cannot be definitively answered without... data.

 

I suspect that a lot of units are sold to those with a noise fetish or to unsuspecting customers.

 

I also suspect that a lot of actual noise problems are found in apartment buildings in crowded cities - where many audiophiles live.  If you live in R1 zoning and have a pole transformer nearby, then you can just hunt down and eliminate noise sources in your own house: Fl lights, internet over AC lines, etc.  This is easy and cheap.

 

[lucretius]

8 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

then you can just hunt down and eliminate noise sources in your own house

 

I used a portable radio (tuned to AM) to track down noise -- found out that a ceiling fan/lamp that had compact fluorescent bulbs and a dimmer switch/control was the culprit.  Now I use LED bulbs with that lamp and the problem went away. 

[Mike Rubin]

Great tips.  Thank you. 

[electronerd122]

On 1/28/2020 at 10:31 AM, marce said:

The mains ground connection is a safety earth, the circuit return path is created from the neg side of the bridge rectifier, no protective earth used or needed. And in double insulated equipment is never used.

https://www.electronics-notes.com/articles/analogue_circuits/diode-rectifiers/full-wave-bridge-rectifier.php

 

To your point, this article with video about bridge rectifiers may come in handy as well https://www.derf.com/how-a-bridge-rectifier-works-step-by-step-tutorial/