November 13, 20241 yr Hallo forum members With the heavy recent thunder and lightning, I have decided to put in an additional surge protector that will hopefully protect my whole house electrical system. I have a surge protector installed in the DB, but feel I need to do more, since the current setup did not provide sufficient protection, and I did suffer some damage. I now want to put in a surge protector where the line comes in to my house from the street where I have a 80A single pole master breaker. What type of surge protector should I be looking at?
November 13, 20241 yr 8 minutes ago, Janosh said: I now want to put in a surge protector where the line comes in to my house from the street where I have a 80A single pole master breaker. What type of surge protector should I be looking at? I'd say your best bet would be a 1:1 transformer between the supplier of power and your DB
November 13, 20241 yr 3 hours ago, Kalahari Meerkat said: I'd say your best bet would be a 1:1 transformer between the supplier of power and your DB How much loss will there be on such a setup?
November 13, 20241 yr 23 minutes ago, TheMac said: How much loss will there be on such a setup? On a decent transformer, probably less than 4% at full power, but it would be an expensive affair, transformer to be mounted indoors, I'd say, or in a box, just outside the wall, where the DB is located... cooling is an issue, even with an oil cooled unit this could present problems... Maybe another approach would be one of having a field mill or two on your property, this should give you a a fair indication of an imminent near or direct lightning strike, this in turn could be used to drop a contactor or two which disconnect from the commercial power side etc. for 30 seconds or a minute, until the field mill readings indicate things are ok again, this however in a thunderstorm, could disconnect from the commercial power side a few times during the storm, assuming of course the lightning discharges are fairly close to your field mills locations... I am still considering setting up such a solution here, would be pretty unique, I think and done right could prevent nearby strikes causing any induced power problems...
November 14, 20241 yr Author On 2024/11/13 at 2:39 PM, Kalahari Meerkat said: On a decent transformer, probably less than 4% at full power, but it would be an expensive affair, transformer to be mounted indoors, I'd say, or in a box, just outside the wall, where the DB is located... cooling is an issue, even with an oil cooled unit this could present problems... Maybe another approach would be one of having a field mill or two on your property, this should give you a a fair indication of an imminent near or direct lightning strike, this in turn could be used to drop a contactor or two which disconnect from the commercial power side etc. for 30 seconds or a minute, until the field mill readings indicate things are ok again, this however in a thunderstorm, could disconnect from the commercial power side a few times during the storm, assuming of course the lightning discharges are fairly close to your field mills locations... I am still considering setting up such a solution here, would be pretty unique, I think and done right could prevent nearby strikes causing any induced power problems... I have done some research on your proposal. It proof to be quite expensive, and not a viable option for me.
November 14, 20241 yr https://www.diyelectronics.co.za/store/current-voltage/2294-lightning-sensor-40km-range.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqplNXLHHmJjBRKNkvP6tNY1rwJvwnE7t83wD7M549GLAqDgCrk This could work to disconnect from the grid, with home assistant
November 15, 20241 yr 9 hours ago, abd7 said: This could work to disconnect from the grid, with home assistant Its re-active, if the 1st strike is in your area, close enough to cause you damage, this would, if it is still alive and well, as well as your home assistant is still alive and well, will let you know you've just been hit, so not a preventative measure...
November 15, 20241 yr Author 4 hours ago, Kalahari Meerkat said: Its re-active, if the 1st strike is in your area, close enough to cause you damage, this would, if it is still alive and well, as well as your home assistant is still alive and well, will let you know you've just been hit, so not a preventative measure... I agree with you. I still have not figured out the solution. The 80A isolator switch does not have overcurrent protection, and I don't think it's preferable to connect a SPD to that, unless I'm mistaken.
November 15, 20241 yr 3 hours ago, Kalahari Meerkat said: Its re-active, if the 1st strike is in your area, close enough to cause you damage, this would, if it is still alive and well, as well as your home assistant is still alive and well, will let you know you've just been hit, so not a preventative measure... Getting advance warning of a potential strike requires electrostatic monitoring. These units seem to be much more expensive than the lightning detector that abd7 suggested (hundreds vs thousands of bucks). So the cost appears to rise steeply for the increased statistical protection. Unless you try to DIY something.
November 15, 20241 yr 1 hour ago, ccrause said: These units seem to be much more expensive than the lightning detector that abd7 suggested (hundreds vs thousands of bucks). Or a bit of homebrewing... https://pithia-nrf.eu/activities-results/outreach/space-weather-research-instruments/electric-field-mills sure you can spend lots of dosh... https://www.boltek.com/product/efm100c-electric-field-mill-kit/ but I'd personally be leaning towards the homebrew option with homeassistant integration and automation... https://www.picotech.com/library/application-note/a-field-mill-for-measuring-atmospheric-electricity and more to be found...
November 15, 20241 yr 2 hours ago, Janosh said: he 80A isolator switch does not have overcurrent protection, and I don't think it's preferable to connect a SPD to that, unless I'm mistaken. the SPD may die, if it needs to take enough energy down to ground, but would still give the rest of the electrical devices a chance to survive and induced surge, this is worthwhile, if you want to increase the chance of less to zero damage, then disconnecting long outdoor cables that are likely to have energy induced in them is the next step, that will require forewarning of potential lightning discharges... field mills are what NASA uses, should be ok for our purposes as well... disclaimer: not a rocket scientist 🙂
November 15, 20241 yr Wonder how reliable this would be : https://github.com/mrk-its/homeassistant-blitzortung Seems better than the DFROBOT board above, which seems very finicky and a bit of a headache from what I've read. Such as : https://community.home-assistant.io/t/esphome-with-as3935-franklin-lightning-sensor-try-increasing-the-spike-rejection-value/209621 https://community.openhab.org/t/as3935-franklin-lightning-sensor-with-esphome/157563 Edited November 15, 20241 yr by abd7
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