COORDINATED SURGE PROTECTIVE DEVICE INSTALLATION
Transient overvoltages, historically among the first disturbances to be recorded by users, have two major causes: lightning and load switching. Depending on local conditions one can be more important than the other, but both need to be duly recognized.
Until now most of the users talk about power quality disturbances that cause mostly operation disruption and slow degradation to the critical loads and are related mainly to load switching, but we want now to take this opportunity to show you the most dangerous kind of power disturbances, that causes, mostly, destruction and faster degradation to the critical systems connected to the net electrical utility. This is why this post is titled: The Catastrophic Effects of Lightning.
High energy surges or transients in the wiring of any electrical installation produced by external lightning may cause disasters to cars, cement walls, air-crafts, home roofs, roads, big trees, and even on animals and humans, as shown in the picture of this post. Then, can you imagine the severe damage these disturbances would cause to sensitive and critical electronic power loads?
Voltage surges are caused by a direct bolt hitting the power system conductors. There are also indirect effects when the lightning bolt strikes an object close to the conductors but not to the conductors themselves. system
The three most prevalent types of system failure caused by direct lightning strikes are:
Catastrophic failure, usually caused by explosions.
Arcing components or destroyed printed circuits.
System degradation (mainly from indirect magnetic induction) of the sensitive electronic components and chip sets, continuously weakening until the system fails (normally this damage is not visible).
And system disruption, like system lock-ups, data errors, communication errors, and slow system operation faults.
In a study of 100 computer system failures attributable to power supply disturbances, weather was cited as the major cause of disruptive sags and outages; voltage sags were found to disrupt computer operations four times as often as outages.
Frequently, random transient problems arise from the power source feeding the circuit creating the most concern because it is difficult to define their amplitude, time duration, and energy content. The catastrophic failures from random transients are generally caused by lightning although they also can be caused by switching parallel loads on the distribution system.
Fortunately, solutions are available. The most important thing is that complete protection against surges will be achieved only by “combining” or “coordinating” the installation of a proper surge protection device for every part (categories, according to IEEE and IEC standards) of the building.
With the advantage of our Integration Coefficient IC, we can provide the most suitable, adapted, and high-benefit/cost ratio solutions for these kinds of destructive events. Please ask us how by subscribing.
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