> Type 1 and type 2 generally are whole house devices wired or connected directly into your main breaker panel. Those 2 are the devices that will work together to clamp surge voltages to something your type 3 device can manage. The best for you here depends on who made your breaker panel. One of mine is made by Siemens and one by the manufacturer of my panel. Both cost me $300 ish total for parts, I did my own installs.
I still have mixed feelings about pannel-based whole-home suppressors. In theory they can only help suppress spikes up to the current their rated for, which is usually much lower than the fast blow of the main breaker. Which means that if enough current is transferred it will trip/disconnect before the main breaker does leaving you vulnerable again.
Id much prefer surge suppression at the device location where the suppression action disconnects the device completely from the line. Generally the MOV/arc variants will cause over-current protections to trip in the suppression device disconnecting it.
I suppose more modern equipment that was designed with surge suppression might take that into account over a retrofit, but Id at least need to confirm that the main breaker disconnects due to over-current before the suppressor disconnects or fails. I will still always have end-point suppression protections.
On the AVR topic, usually the auto transformers in the devices have a single buck/boost winding, and all my nicer/commercial devices will shut down and disconnect the output if input voltage drops below the min output after boost, or above max out during buck. But this action can take hundreds of milliseconds as 60hz = 16.6ms for sampling, processor decision, relay action, and auto transformer transient impedance. So during surges it's largely ineffective, you just hope surge suppression works for spikes.
For switch mode power supplies, they are pretty resilient to large transients in input voltage, and have so many protections they can take lots of abuse without damaging themselves or components.
ChipTuner
npub1qd…3fqm7
2026-09-09 17:01:46 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…u3j7
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npub1qdjn8j4gwgmkj3k5un775nq6q3q7mguv5tvajstmkdsqdja2havq03fqm7Seen on
wss://freelay.sovbit.hostPublished at
2026-09-09 17:01:46 UTCEvent JSON
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"content": "\u003e Type 1 and type 2 generally are whole house devices wired or connected directly into your main breaker panel. Those 2 are the devices that will work together to clamp surge voltages to something your type 3 device can manage. The best for you here depends on who made your breaker panel. One of mine is made by Siemens and one by the manufacturer of my panel. Both cost me $300 ish total for parts, I did my own installs. \n\nI still have mixed feelings about pannel-based whole-home suppressors. In theory they can only help suppress spikes up to the current their rated for, which is usually much lower than the fast blow of the main breaker. Which means that if enough current is transferred it will trip/disconnect before the main breaker does leaving you vulnerable again. \n\nId much prefer surge suppression at the device location where the suppression action disconnects the device completely from the line. Generally the MOV/arc variants will cause over-current protections to trip in the suppression device disconnecting it. \n\nI suppose more modern equipment that was designed with surge suppression might take that into account over a retrofit, but Id at least need to confirm that the main breaker disconnects due to over-current before the suppressor disconnects or fails. I will still always have end-point suppression protections. \n\nOn the AVR topic, usually the auto transformers in the devices have a single buck/boost winding, and all my nicer/commercial devices will shut down and disconnect the output if input voltage drops below the min output after boost, or above max out during buck. But this action can take hundreds of milliseconds as 60hz = 16.6ms for sampling, processor decision, relay action, and auto transformer transient impedance. So during surges it's largely ineffective, you just hope surge suppression works for spikes. \n\nFor switch mode power supplies, they are pretty resilient to large transients in input voltage, and have so many protections they can take lots of abuse without damaging themselves or components. ",
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