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Fluctuations in power quality are inevitable.
Still, there's plenty you can do to protect your household electronics.
Surges and Spikes -- outages
and other power disturbances: Surges and
spikes can be present on our system for a fraction of a second before our
equipment either corrects the disturbance or results in an outage.
These can be caused by trees, animal encounters, normal electrical equipment
actions and human intervention -- like digging into our underground
electrical system, or even lightning -- rare as that is around Juneau!
While
surges happen for an instant, surges can cause damage to your sensitive
electronic equipment and appliances. The closer you are located to
the source of a power disturbance, the more intense the surge can be.
Think about damage that could occur if a tree should fall through your
service drop. Since power disturbances are unavoidable for any
power delivery system, protecting your equipment from this type of
damage makes sense. Most electric companies recommend two levels
of defense:
Meter-based surge protection
to suppress the large surges that can come into your home or small
business and ...
Outlet-based
surge protection and UPS battery back-up
protection with voltage regulation for your computer and other sensitive
electronics.
Sixty-five percent of surges
that cause damage to your equipment originate within your own four
walls. Meter-based protection will not address surges caused
internally.
Low voltage and
brownouts also occur during outages and near-outages.
These occurrences also take the tiniest part of a second, before our
equipment acts to correct or break the connection, causing an outage.
Unfortunately, it's harder to protect your equipment against voltage
sags and brown-outs. AEL&P's system is vulnerable to this type of
disturbance since we are not part of the grid whereby other generation
sources can quickly replace lost generation.
Hydro, while a great resource
for our power supply, is somewhat slower to respond to changes in
voltage requirements in our system compared with fossil-based
generation. Damage to your equipment could occur due to
low-voltage problems. Meter-based protection and outlet surge
suppression will not protect your equipment from this condition.
So what can you do?
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Read about purchasing power protection devices.
Click here for
AEL&P's Guide to Purchasing Power Protection.
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Consider purchasing a HomeGuard meter-base surge
suppressor. Click here to find out more about
HomeGuard.
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Learn more about power quality and power
protection from these links:
www.apcc.com
Applied Power Conversion's website.
Click on United States, and on Home/Home Office Products for Power
Information.
www.portlandgeneral.com
Portland General Electric's website.
Select Products and Services and Surge Protection.
www.tripplite.com
Tripp Lite's homepage.
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