I spent almost $500 dollars on an expensive surge protector and it didn'teven work. Just to give everyone an idea of what happened, the electricity burned right through the Panamax...through the receiver, and blew up one of my surround speakers.
The Panamax also did exactly what its numeric specs said it would do.
You have too choices. Buy a $3 power strip with some ten cent protector parts and expensive Panamax paint for $hundreds. Or spend $1 per protected appliance for the surge protection that protects even from direct lightning strikes. Latter is how it has been done routinely for over 100 years. Former is the scam promoted by an overwhelming majority of posters only educated by retail propaganda.
No protector is protection. Protection is (instead) about where energy dissipates. Scam protectors will not discuss any of this. The well proven technology - a 'whole house' protector - connects even direct lightning strikes harmlessly to earth.
Those who feel to know something will deny this. An average lightning strike is 20,000 amps. So the minimally sized 'whole house' protector is 50,000 amps. Direct lightning strikes must not even damage the protector. Still, a majority will ignore numbers, recommend ineffective plug-in protectors, and 'know' without first learning simple concepts. Either that protector connects short (ie 'less than 10 feet') to earth. Or it does nothing.
If the protector is too close to appliances, then it makes damage to those appliances easier. But again, you saw what Dr Martzloff's 1994 IEEE paper says can happen. And what we engineers saw long before that. The Panamax did appliance damage as electrical concepts said. That Panamax, with specs similar to all other plug-in protectors, did exactly what those specs claimed.
Install a 'whole house' protector with earthing upgraded to both meet and exceed post 1990 National Electrical code. Only then are you doing what has been done routinely for over 100 years - to have no damage even from direct lightning strikes.
Only more responsible companies provide effective protectors such as General Electric, Intermatic, Keison, Square D, Polyphaser, Siemens, or Leviton. A Cutler-Hammer solution sells for less than $50 in Lowes and Home Depot - because any 'electrically informed' homeowner can even install the well proven solution.
Bottom line: protection is always about where energy dissipates. If permitted inside the building, then energy will hunt for earth destructively via appliances - as you have seen. Protection means no surge can be anywhere inside the house. A protector is only as effective as its earth ground. Plug-in protector will not discuss earth to protect obscene profit margins.
Add 10 cent protector parts to a $3 power strip. That is virtually every plug-in protector. One sells in the grocery store for $7. Another with the same protector circuit sells for $150 in the big box TV store. You simply paid many $hundreds more for the same $7 protector. Your only solution is a 'whole house' protector. Or use no protectors so that protection inside the new electronics is not compromised by that adjacent protector. Yes, a plug-in protector will even earth surges destructively via adjacent appliances. But then you even witnessed that.
