While most power surges originate within a home’s electrical system, the much bigger concern is when there’s a major surge in the local power grid. A surge in your electrical system itself can damage various things in your home, but the damage is typically minor and won’t immediately ruin anything. If the power in the electrical grid surges, on the other hand, it’s likely to cause massive amounts of damage. That’s why it’s worth investing in a whole-home surge protector to prevent or at least lessen the damage that can occur if a surge from the grid strikes your house.
How a Whole-Home Surge Protector Detects Power Surges
The most common type of whole-home surge protector is installed between the house’s electrical service panel and the wire from the nearby power pole that feeds the house. The way the surge protector works is by continually measuring how many volts of electricity are flowing out of the grid into the house’s electrical system. This allows it to instantly detect when a power surge occurs in the grid, resulting in the voltage spiking to an unsafe level.
Understanding the Purpose of Your Home’s Electrical Grounding Rod
Almost every home has a safety mechanism connected to the main electrical panel known as a grounding rod. The primary purpose of the grounding rod is to protect against potential fires and other safety hazards that can result when there’s an issue with the house’s electrical system.
For instance, a damaged wire in any electrical circuit can create an issue like an arc fault and cause a massive increase in the power flowing through the circuit. If this happens, the power flowing through the live wire gets redirected so that it flows back to the electrical panel through the circuit’s ground wire instead of continuing to flow back through the neutral wire.
The current then flows out of the panel through a copper wire that’s connected to the ground rod outside. This ensures that the electricity gets safely dispersed underground so that hopefully no damage occurs to the electrical system, appliances on that circuit, etc. If the electrical system wasn’t grounded, the power would continue flowing unimpeded and cause severe damage or even lead to an electrical fire.
How a Whole-Home Surge Protector Blocks Power Surges
This same process of redirecting the electricity into the grounding rod is also how a whole-home surge protector protects against surges that arise within the power grid. When the voltage flowing into the house reaches an unsafe level, the surge protector essentially blocks some of the power and sends it back outside to the grounding rod.
While many people think a surge protector is similar to a circuit breaker and actually stops electricity from flowing, this isn’t the case. Instead, it just blocks and redirects some of the power so that the voltage gets reduced to a safer level. How much power a whole-home surge protector continues to allow into the house depends on something known as its clamping voltage.
A good surge protector typically has a clamping voltage of 330 volts. That means if it measures the voltage coming into the house is any higher than this, it will immediately start sending the excess voltage through the grounding rod so that no more than 330 volts of power flow into the house.
While 330 volts of electricity is still high enough to potentially do some damage to your electrical system and anything else that’s currently receiving power, the amount of damage that may occur is nothing compared to what you’d likely experience if you didn’t have a whole-home surge protector.
That’s because something like a bolt of lightning striking the electrical grid in your area can cause the power to spike in the thousands or tens of thousands of volts. This amount of voltage is almost sure to fry the majority of your appliances, your TV, stereo system, computers, etc. A bigger issue is that this type of surge can lead to a fire since the high voltage causes electrical wiring to get extremely hot.
If you want to install a surge protector at your home or need any other electrical service in the Raleigh area, you can trust the “Hometown Service Heroes” at CMC Electric to help. We’ve been serving the community since 2005 and are dedicated to providing safe, reliable residential electrical services.
Our dedication to excellence in workmanship and customer service is the reason why so many of your neighbors turn to us for all of their electrical needs. No matter whether you want to invest in whole-home surge protection or need any other help with your electrical system, give CMC Electric a call to ensure the job is done correctly and at a fair, affordable price.
