Surge Protection for Homes and Businesses

Voltage spikes and surges from lightning, the utility or your own equipment can damage electronics instantly or wear them down over time. Cooper Electric designs and installs transient voltage surge suppression (TVSS) to protect homes, offices and industrial facilities across Greater Cincinnati.

Lightning is one source of damaging surges

A lightning strike can heat the air around it to about 50,000°F and carry hundreds of millions of volts. But lightning is not the only threat: motors, presses and other large equipment starting and stopping, inside your building or at a neighbor’s, also send spikes through your system.

Benefits of Surge Protection

• Protection against lightning-induced transient voltages
• Protection against transients generated inside your own building
• Less stress and failure in semiconductors, computer chips and circuit boards
• Fewer microprocessor malfunctions, logic losses and data storage errors
• Less insulation breakdown in motors
• Less equipment failure, downtime and maintenance cost

Where Surge Protection Goes

At the main electrical service

A surge protector at the main service keeps transients that start outside, such as a lightning strike on or near the building or a utility line, or large equipment switching at a neighboring plant, from entering your whole system. For homes, this is a whole-house surge protector at the main panel.

At distribution panels

When large motors, relays and other inductive devices shut off, the energy that was flowing to them has to go somewhere, and it surges into the surrounding wiring and devices. Some of these internal transients reach 2,500 volts for a fraction of a second, which can be very damaging to computers and electronics. Surge protection at sub-panels keeps those spikes from traveling through interconnected circuits.

At individual equipment

Plug-in protection at sensitive equipment stops even small transients from falsely triggering semiconductors and upsetting data processing logic, timing and sequencing. Choose devices that are UL 1449 listed, with a fast response time and adequate surge current and energy (joule) ratings.

Spikes, Surges and Transients

Transients are brief over-voltages in an electrical system. A spike lasts from nanoseconds to milliseconds; a surge lasts from milliseconds to seconds. Transients can disrupt, damage or completely destroy electronic equipment, and the damage can show up immediately or over a long period of time.

After a strike, see our lightning damage inspection. Learn more about lightning from the National Severe Storms Laboratory.