What devices do you have UPS connected even though you have a PowerWall?

[BGbreeder]

Thanks. I would expect the Envoy to be more sensitive than Insteon. Insteon has RF+Powerline on most devices these days, so bridging the phases is not necessary any more because the RF can do it. The basic issue is whether the surge suppressor will absorb the powerline high frequency enough to keep any device from receiving the signal from another device on the powerline network.

In general, they shouldn't. Whole house surge protectors are generally just very very large metal oxide varistors made under close tolerances to clamp voltages above a certain level (e.g. 360V) in nanoseconds. It should do nothing to the data over power line signals which are a few volts added to the regular AC, or a burst of data at the zero crossing point. A few whole house surge protectors also use gas tubes, which are slower, but can dump a great deal of energy to ground.

The sort of thing that tends to get power line communications devices in trouble are noise suppressors, or snubbers, which are designed to remove signals that aren't 60Hz, typically toroid coils and capacitors. Many home computer "surge protector" power strips tend to include these because of poor AC behavior by many generations of computer switching power supplies that generate harmonics, causing trouble elsewhere in the house. It is my perception that power supplies have gotten better over the years, and I don't think it is the problem it once was, but I have run across the occasional cheap wall wart that wasn't very well behaved electrically speaking.

All the best,

BG

 

[Vines]

Thanks. I would expect the Envoy to be more sensitive than Insteon. Insteon has RF+Powerline on most devices these days, so bridging the phases is not necessary any more because the RF can do it. The basic issue is whether the surge suppressor will absorb the powerline high frequency enough to keep any device from receiving the signal from another device on the powerline network.

My Siemens whole home surge protector has no effect on my E-gauge PLC either, seems to work great.

Whole-home Surge protection installation was as easy as I can imagine, and am happy to have paid the insurance after hearing of many GW2 which may have been damaged by surges.

 

[aesculus]

My Siemens whole home surge protector has no effect on my E-gauge PLC either, seems to work great.

Which model did you get?

 

[Vines]

Which model did you get?

I bought the FS100 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013WINLIO?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2_dt_b_product_details

 

[jeremymc7]

I’ve had high end UPS’s on all my expensive electronics pre and post Tesla.

Not specially for outages these days but for one of the same reasons as before. To isolate and clean up the power.

 

[NathanielHrnblwr]

I have them on computer, networking, and AV equipment. The PW cutover in many cases is not sub-second. I had an outage this week about 9am. Solar was producing. I'm on a Zoom call then heard all the UPS's beep and my monitor (not backed up) went out. Had to fix the clocks on appliances, etc.

 

[zƬesla]

Whole-home Surge protection installation was as easy as I can imagine, and am happy to have paid the insurance after hearing of many GW2 which may have been damaged by surges.

@Vines with pole-mounted panels, would you recommend FS100s on both the breaker for the utility AND the breaker for the PV?

 

[Vines]

@Vines with pole-mounted panels, would you recommend FS100s on both the breaker for the utility AND the breaker for the PV?

For Ground Mounted PV panels I can see a use case for adding a surge protector to the Subpanel where the PV is combined. The risk of an event from your PV panels is pretty small though.

If you truly have lightning strike the array itself, the SPD will not protect your equipment well and you instead want a lightning arrestor or both. I don't know much about lightning arrestors but the above was gathered from Wiki.