How often do mains transients destroy equipment in US/UK/EU households? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: Faringdon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2021, 07:55:07 pm
content: Hi,I was watching this..and wondered how common it really is for people to have TV's etc ruined by mains transients?

author: bdunham7
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2021, 08:09:43 pm
content: Probably not too common, as far as I can recall at the moment, it has not happened to me. I just wonder how it compares with the number of fires caused by malfunctioning MOVs in surge protectors.

author: jpanhalt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2021, 08:22:23 pm
content: C'mon man. Do a poll here for those who have had failures. I'll bet the total number per year is far less (<1%) than the number of children shot in Chicago alone this year (261). Do something useful.

author: jmelson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2021, 08:58:22 pm
content: I can only recall two incidents. I had a big 32-bit wire-wrapped CPU at my old place in about 1980 that was connected by a parallel cable to my 8-bit system, and the drivers and receivers on that cable were popped by a relatively nearby lightning hit, a couple blocks away. Then, we had the ethernet port on a PC die here in about 1995 or so. Yeah, ethernets are galvanically isolated, so that was a surprise. This is in the US midwest, where we do have a lot of thunderstorms.Jon

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2021, 09:13:03 pm
content: Just imagine: that subject is also treez' monomaniac interest!

author: Rod
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2021, 09:14:30 pm
content: Interesting maps of the frequency of lightning in US/UK/EU here...https://www.severe-weather.eu/theory/severe-storms-environment-united-states-europe-swe/

author: armandine2
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2021, 09:18:33 pm
content: I've watched a few of these guys' educational videos and this is by far the best one one I've seen - what ever the technical meritsof their case the video production looks good to me.

author: Gyro
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2021, 09:21:15 pm
content: In the early '80s, we had a lightning strike on the streetlamp across the road. It took out a relay drive transistor in a 1200 baud Racal modem, no other damage. The streetlamp was still out when we moved house about 6 months later though!I can't recall any other mains transient related damage - even when the electricity board accidentally floated the 3 phase neutral while doing a street cable repair.Edit: Damn, I didn't notice this was another Faringdon treez thread. We'll doubtless find out what assertion we're 'proving' in due course. I'll lay odds that it will be EV charger related though!

author: antenna
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2021, 11:11:09 pm
content: Northern Minnesota, we get about 4 to 6 surges a year. The latest one did damage to the keurig coffee maker (as it now transmits RFI heavily between 1MHz and 3MHz just plugged in and off) and the neighbors marine battery charger let the smoke out.For fun, I took a look at it and discovered something cool. A part I never knew about. Inside that little Cabella's charger, the mains is fused and right after the fuse was a split open burnt TVS14241 MOV. Those buggers have a high impedance when under a threshold voltage and becomes a near dead short above that voltage. When a voltage surge hits the MOV, it shorts the line and blows the fuse disconnecting the mains from the rest of the board so the surge doesn't damage anything else. A new MOV and fuse and the battery charger was back in working condition. I only found two companies that carried that little TVS14241 (it's obsolete, tissusa had them). I think I will stuff the extra MOV's I ordered in everything else!

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 11, 2021, 11:21:31 pm
content: I had lightning take out a load of gear once, but it was an induced pulse between the telephone line and ground that did it, the mains side was fine.I don't say it never happens, but the mains is fairly well characterised, we know what it does and statistically how often it does it, power supplies karking it due to piss poor design or excessive attempts at cost cutting is far more common then ones croaking because the mains did something unpredictable.Seriously, NOBODY except for the hard of thinking seems the mains as a nice 230V RMS sine wave, you look at the data (largely in the safety standards) as to what the real mains looks like and then engineer to deal with that reality.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 12, 2021, 04:22:02 am
content: A few weeks ago, one of the family members lost their TV and a few outlets. I had a friend bring me some sort of RFish remote thing that looks like it almost caught fire. Then we had that tree get hit a few years ago that put enough common mode on the ground lines in the lab to take out some of my equipment (plus other devices in the home).Most of my main problems today are dropouts that last a few seconds. Reminds me, I need to measure my supercap UPS again.

author: marcdraco
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 12, 2021, 12:45:23 pm
content: I've had more damage done to sensitive equipment (yes Raspberry Pi Foundation, I'm looking at YOU) when there's been a sudden and unexpected power out (or brown out.)Yeah, yeah... I should have a UPS but this was before LiPo UPSes were cheap and relatively common.The Pi 3 (not sure about the 4) has a nasty habit of blowing uSD cards if its not shut down politely. Doesn't happen every time, but guarantee it will happen eventually.We had an underground fault here for years the company couldn't find and every time it rained the local substation would call it a night and we'd go dark until some poor chap was dragged away from his dinner to come reset the breaker.Eventually the damage go so severe that it blew a fairly substantial hole in the pavement and since they could easily see it, it's been fixed. But not before I'd had TWO uSD cards eaten.