Surge protectors and line conditioners

clv101

clv101

clv101

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
10,962
Location
Bristol
Does anyone know about surge protectors and line or power conditioners?

Our house is off-grid, our AC comes from two different inverters, a low power 1.2kW which is on all the time and a 6kW inverter which we use for oven, kettle, induction hobs, washing machine, power tools etc but we sometimes turn it off when not in use. The smaller inverter is on 24/7 with all the little things, including the fridge and freezer. When the motor starts on the freezer it momentarily overloads the little inverter, but this is okay, it can 'surge' to 2.4kW for a short period however if an AC light bulb is on at the same time it flickers for a second. Pretty much all our lighting is DC so not impacted but we do have an AC lamp that shows it up. We also have other things like ADSL router etc on the same inverter - and they seem to cope with the 'flicker' fine.

I'm thinking about using a desktop computer (100% laptops currently), and wondering how it'll cope with the 'flicker'.

Are modern power supplies really tolerant of slightly 'dirty' AC? Or are they really sensitive?
Would a power conditioner smooth things out?

I could always use the rock solid 6kW inverter.
 
ATX PSUs are generally quite tolerant of poor quality AC. The ATX spec says that they must cope with the power dropping out completely for at least 16ms, and they have filtering to cope with noise.
 
Active PFC PSU's should tolerate "brown outs" quite well, because they're built to automatically operate down to ~100V level mains voltage.
For transient drops to near zero voltage Seasonic Prime Titanium would be best with 30+ ms hold up time.

Surge protector would certainly do PSU's job easier with load transients causing also voltage spikes and filtering general EMI.
 
Line conditioners are a waste of time and many are snake oil, a good branded surge protector IMO a must to save you from lighting strikes. etc.

I personally have never lost anything but I do use surge protectors though my mother and a good few people in her street, surrounding area lost their Virgin TV boxes a few years ago when lighting hit the street CAB, the living room box died because the lazy bugger did not put one of those surge protectors on the coax but did in the bedroom which was not effected but then again it did not blow so possibly it did not reach the living room.
 
EsaT said:
Active PFC PSU's should tolerate "brown outs" quite well, because they're built to automatically operate down to ~100V level mains voltage.
For transient drops to near zero voltage Seasonic Prime Titanium would be best with 30+ ms hold up time.

Surge protector would certainly do PSU's job easier with load transients causing also voltage spikes and filtering general EMI.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that sounds pretty good. So which are the 'good' ~500W units?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom