General overview and description of how surge protection works and how to properly use surge protectors for various applications.

This article defines surge protection and explains how surge protectors work and also provides a detailed list of related terms and their definitions relating to surge protection.

This article describes the impact of overvoltage, surges, RFI, and harmonics as well as the impact of voltage sag and how grid voltage values, higher or lower than guaranteed nominal values, have an effect on electronic intelligence processing equipment. Incoming grid power “sees” the equipment's DC power supply, which bears the brunt of any AC grid voltage variation.

Knowing industry guidelines can save you money and enhance performance.The vast array of surge protection devices, and the ratings that characterize them, can be confusing. This article explains how to sort through all the choices to determine the design strategy and product choices that will provide the protection you need at a cost you can afford using three common approaches.

This article offers a detailed description on how to safeguard data communication equipment from surges and transients by using external transient voltage surge suppressors (TVSS) as well as simplified explanations of other surge protection equipment.

This article offers advice on selecting the proper TVSS equipment and devices to handle specific loads and dispels the misinformation about TVSS products that is pervasive and convincing enough to lead many people to select and install TVSS devices incorrectly, resulting in unnecessary damage to equipment and costly downtime and repairs.

People often incorrectly assume that the term surge current capacity, or withstand, describes an SPD's level of protection. Instead, it's simply a rating of how much energy the SPD can withstand before failure. It largely depends on the size of the SPD — a larger one can withstand more energy. Keep in mind that the number of surges an SPD has to withstand will add up — regardless of whether it's one sizable event or several small ones. Specifying excess capacity may mean longer times between replacements — but it doesn't imply a higher degree of protection.

The primary function of any surge protection device is to identify, in a fraction of a cycle, an overvoltage on the electrical system and divert it to protect other equipment in the system. Although end-users expect a surge protection device to perform this function many times throughout its life, manufacturers in the electrical industry recognize that these devices may have a limited life, in comparison to the facility's entire electrical system. Based on these elementary principles, consider the following TVSS installation factors that will ensure a better performing and more reliable electrical distribution system.

This article explains in detail the applications in which surge protectors should be used and defines the technical terms that relate to these applications.

This article is designed to educate consumers on the specifications of surge protection products including peak surge current, energy rating and suppressed voltage ratings.

This group of articles offers a wealth of information about home surge protection including surge withstand capabilities of various devices, gapped arresters, monitoring of surge-protective devices and TOV effects on surge-protective devices.

This article offers definitions of various surge suppression related terms including shunt mode, series mode and hybrid as well as detailed explanations of what each suppressor is best used for.

The most common approach to surge suppression relies on using a variety of commercial-quality, low-current-rated metal oxide varistors (MOVs) or silicon avalanche diodes (SADs) manufactured in bulk, and positioned in parallel arrays on PCBs. However, many such surge-suppression devices (SPDs) place the equipment they are designed to protect in peril, leaving them ultimately unprotected due to improper circuit design, inadequate surge-current capacity, and inadequate testing evaluations.

Major equipment manufacturers, in fields as diverse as industrial automation, medical electronics and consumer electronics, are seeing 30% to 50% of their field failures resulting from a single root cause. Such field failures typically occur in the input power-supply stage, and have routinely been attributed to “power surges.” The primary form of surge protection today is transient voltage surge suppression (TVSS) to protect against voltage surges that occur as a result of direct lightning strikes.