John Andersen wrote:
... Ask any electrical engineer. They will tell you the same thing. There is no such thing as protection from lightning.
Something that just jumped 10,000 feet out the sky melted your TV, set the utility poll on fire, and has your cat puffed up to the size of a panda bear, will not have a problem jumping no stinkin surge protector.
Well, actually, John, there is no protection from a direct lightning strike. We can agree there. But direct lightning strikes are vanishingly rare events -- and lightning has no will of its own. We can influence the path lightning takes (this is why direct strikes on consumers are vanishingly rare), and we can suppress its side effects. This is why surge protection is good. And while more is better, the principle of diminishing returns rules here, too. All utilities go to substantial lengths to redirect the effects of lightning away from their customers. Their efforts are expensive and very effective. Thus, a nearby strike will be diverted to ground without harming nearby customers. But the nearer the strike, the more the side effects get through to customers. The point of surge protection is to suppress the fairly rare event that hits a power wire a hundred yards away and induces a large spike in the power line or nearby telephone wires. And these events, though not common, are common enough to occasionally damage unprotected devices. Now, having said that, I don't have any surge suppressors in my home :-). Dominion Power and Cox Telephone and their predecessors have done quite well for me for 40+ years. You decide for yourself what risk you're willing to accept in life, and how much you're willing to pay to avoid more. John Perry Electronics engineer, who has done a good deal of electrical engineering, too. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org