Surge protection housed within consumer unit

[Mike1983]

Hi all

I was wondering if anyone has gone down the route of protecting their entire electrical system using a surge protection device in the consumer unit?

I'm currently about to get a re-wire undertaken and I'm just looking at specifying my needs to the electrician.

I noted Hager have an SPD available that fits between the incoming isolator and the busbar. This means that individual surge protected socket strips will no longer be needed, the entire system is protected.

The downside, it's expensive at £200+ for the module.

Not sure if I will go with it yet...

Mike

 

[Nightglow]

When you read up on them on the Hager, the protect against switching of transformers, lighting and motors, I thinks it's a worth while investment.
Some years ago, my next door neighbour got struck, but I still lost my tv, & several other items as a result.
Might have also save me grief when electric board laid a new service cable to the house, then decide to run 440v through it instead of 220v.

http://www.hager.co.uk/products/energy-distribution/protection-devices/surge-protection/8028.htm

 

[bitslice]

Anything that fits on a busbar is about as impressive as a Belkin Surge plug, that thing has at most £2 worth of components (edit: yep, a spark gap and a MOV, £200 my arse, it's nothing more than a Belkin plug in a DIN box).

Surge supressors should contain a run of fairly large filter chokes on the LN lines, a couple of lightning gas arcs, a few XY rated caps and a whole raft of MOVs. It's the latter that degrade over time, so if you only have one it's not going to protect for very long.
Physically it's the size of a clock radio going up to a shoebox, although really it comes down to what level of protection you want to achieve and how much money you want to chuck at it (a £1000 gets you a lovely ferro-resonant isolation transformer )

I think the one I've got hanging about is only rated at 50amp, so I'll wire a ring main into it or something.
It's the downside of including chokes (which the Hager avoids by not having them) in that they have to be rated for the line current, which for a CU is likely to 100amps and a 100amp choke is huge. Just having a spark gap and MOV(s) is enough to blow the fuse at the right time, but it's only half a job IMO, I'd prefer to add a filter into the circuit that's going to use it, the rating can be lower and it is then practical to use line chokes (added benefit of noise suppression too).

The ones worth having are from the designs published in the various electronic hobbyist magazines, Elektor did a lovely one a whole back. Commercial ones often pointlessly ramp up the price through FUD or pretending to be some wonder add on for Hi-Fi, or just take the **** because it's in the spec to add a surge protector.

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