I can make the below arguments against getting a power conditioner.
However, I may not fully understand the benefits of having one.
Am I missing anything?
1) I seem to live in a "no strike" zone. IME, lightning does tend to strike the same location twice (and more). I have lived places where lightening strikes were to be expected. My current home seems to be pretty safe. I have been here for 6 years and haven't seen any indication of line surges during storms (or otherwise). We do have the occasional power outage, but they never seem to be "near" or intense events.
2) I don't like sinking money into disposable items. I learned from buying quality cordless tools that batteries will only last ~6 years and then the cost of new batteries will exceed the cost of buying a more capable unit including equivalent (or better) batteries. I'm not a contractor, so I now buy the Ryobi or Hitachi stuff. Is this analogy fair for power conditioners?
3) I expect to relocate in about 6 years, and since the state of electrical surges will be an unknown in the new home, I do plan to buy a conditioner then. Will I miss out on anything in the meantime?
Thanks,
Kurt
A power conditioner will only do so much with a lightning strike and if it's located far (more than a few yards) from the service entrance, it does less. Usually, if the voltage is high enough, sacrificial parts inside fail and break the circuit. The surge protector is toast but if it reacts fast enough, the equipment connected to it is OK.
A good analogy, not really. Batteries have a limit on how many times they can be charged, discharged and re-charged. The charge and discharge cycle generates heat and the rate of each affects how much heat. Leaving batteries in the charger is about the worst thing that can be done to them because, even though the charging indicator may not be on, it's still receiving voltage and this also causes heat. LiI batteries rebound better than NiCd but once they reach a certain charge level, the wheels fall off very quickly and they can be damaged, so the manufacturers make it impossible to use them once this point has been reached by installing a control chip. This chip stores charge.discharge data and a thermal history, so they can tell if the battery has been used normally or if it was abused/used improperly. They do this because I think we all know people who were so hard on them that they burst and then they say "I don't know what happened, it just started smoking", or something like that.
If you don't have light bulbs and motors dying faster than you think is normal, you may not have a problem but the best thing to do is monitor the actual voltage. A couple of brands have software and an ethernet port so you can see the range of voltage.
