Surge Protection

Protecting Against Surges
We all take our electricity for granted. However, for many reasons beyond the control of your electric utility, variations in power can occur from time to time. Chicopee Electric Light has sought out the very best surge protection equipment available today, and we can provide you with everything you need to ensure you will enjoy your home equipment and appliances for years to come.

What causes these voltage fluctuations?

• Meteorological conditions that precipitate lighting storm activity are, from a dollar-volume standpoint, the single most destructive transient source.

• Events such as animals running across power lines, vehicles knocking down utility poles and a host of other problems can disturb the constant clean power your utility provides.

• Internal customer operations such as air conditioning, refrigeration, copiers or laser printers, fluorescent light ballasts, elevators, circuit-breaker load disconnects, and on-off cycling of large motors may introduce transients to the AC power system.

• Power providers, due to variations in demand, are required to switch their generators and lines to meet their customers' needs. Each switching operation may result in a transient surge that spreads with a ripple effect through the entire affected power grid.

• Other users on the utility feeder are capable of causing transients because when a facility's main breaker clears, a transient may be generated.

Why do I need protection?

Transient surges are a hidden nemesis to solid-state electronic equipment, damaging sensitive components, destroying the integrity of data on microchips, causing equipment downtime and expensive maintenance bills. Transient surges have been occurring for years, but only in this age of sophisticated solid-state technology have they become a serious problem.

Basically, a transient surge can be defined as a temporary fluctuation of energy on the AC power, data, telephone or cable TV line. Integrated circuits and semiconductor chips contained in all manner of today's electronic and electromechanical products have a decreased tolerance to voltage fluctuations. No matter what the cause of transient, this voltage phenomenon creates one of three possible effects:

• There can be immediate noticeable component damage, which is caused by a transient of a voltage level so high that a component cannot survive.

• There can be an immediate effect that will result in a system error or an abnormal operation. This situation is caused by a transient of lesser voltage that above but sufficiently intense to change state, thus causing a problem.

• Third effect, which may not become apparent for some time, is produced when a transient of even lesser voltage puts stress on a component, thus causing that component to degrade and then to fail a few hours, days or weeks later.

Resulting repair or replacement of your appliances and equipment can be extremely costly and inconvenient. You thoughtfully invested in your appliances. Now it's time to invest in protecting them.

What solutions are right for me?

It is evident that there is an enormous need for dynamic transient protection devices that will identify voltage fluctuations and shunt them to ground. When choosing a transient suppressor there are six major performance characteristics to be considered:

1. Response Time - This is the time that it takes the suppressor to turn on and start to absorb the incoming transient. A transient suppressor should be one-thousand times faster than the transient and respond within a few nanoseconds.
2. Voltage Protection Level - Regardless of the magnitude of the incoming transient surge, a suppressor must activate at, and hold the voltage level to a safe voltage threshold. To provide satisfactory performance, a transient suppressor must clamp the transient to 120 percent of nominal peak voltage value of the sine wave or data signal.
3. Power Dissipation - Generally measured in terms of watts, power dissipation refers to the ability of the suppressor to absorb the energy in the transient, without exceeding the safe voltage protection level for the devices being protected.
4. Disturbance-free Operation - A suppressor should be able to operate without shutting down, or otherwise interrupting the operation of the protected system.
5. Performance Reliability - This refers to a suppressor's ability to handle one transient after another without its operating characteristics being altered. The clamping voltage point must not change with use.
6. Operating Life - The life of a suppressor refers to the number of times it will absorb transients without degrading or failing. Obviously, the longer the suppressor's life, the more cost-effective that suppressor is.

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