Protecting Against Power Surges

Rebecca — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 03:10:22 +0000

Well, winters storms are only a few weeks away, and that usually means power outages. Sudden power outages, and power surges, can cause terrible damage to electronics. I have a very high-power (and expensive) computer and monitor that I use for my business. Earlier this year, we had a severe sudden power outage with power surge, and all my computers went ZZZAPPP. Thank God, I had the computers plugged into power strips with surge protectors, but being without Internet service and my computer for several hours was tough! And the sudden shutdown of the computers with a power outage is not good for them.

I bought an uninterruptible power supply battery backup system– the APC Back-UPS model– to protect my computer unit and DSL router and to provide power during outages. Wow! What a difference! We’ve since had several outages, and the APC has performed really well. These models are currently on sale at Buy.com, for very reasonable prices and free shipping.

The battery backups don’t power your electronics very long, though. I have my router, behemoth computer, and 23″ screen monitor (a big power sucker it is) and am able to have about 15 minutes of battery power until I have to shut things down. Of course, if I didn’t use my big computer and used, say, my laptop on its own battery, the APC unit will last much longer. But the APC gives me enough time to finish up what I am doing and shutdown my computer properly during outages. If you have expensive electronics that you want to protect, check these things out, they are very nice to have! I don’t think they are terribly expensive, especially if you can get one on sale. They are certainly less expensive than a new computer or computer repair!

Outlet photo thanks to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jakematesdesign/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

New York Renovator » power outages

Protecting Against Power Surges