Home cinema - Power Conditioners Worth the Money?

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Power Conditioners Worth the Money?

w_tom wrote:
'Whole house' protector is not just a good idea. It is essential.
Any protection system that does not shunt surges will not provide
effective protection. ....

If appliance has already accomplished that, then what does a plug-in
protector do? Well it could then earth that transient. Oh. No
earthing connection (and avoids discussion about earthing). IOW it
does nothing useful. Bud's repeated references to SRE also forgets
that principle is already inside the appliance and also implemented in
another layer by 'whole house' protector's earthing..

In 1999 Francois Martzloff, who was the NIST guru on surges, wrote a
guide for customer service reps for rural electrical coops. Included was:
"Whole house protection consists of a protective device at the service
entrance complemented by TVSSs [plug-in surge suppressors] for sensitive
appliances [electronic equipment] within the house."

The IEEE guide, chapter 6, is "Specific Protection Examples". Both
examples use multi-port plug-in surge suppressors. If you have trouble
figuring out the text look at the nice pictures of multi-port plug-in
surge suppressors.

Bud's citations demonstrate complex engineering installation in one
room - the six ports.

Six ports comes from another paper by Francois Martzloff. No house has
the six ports. If you could read and think you could see the point of
the SRE paper is that SREs protect the 'six' ports:
"The surge reference equalizer combines the protective function for both
system ports in the same enclosure. A common, single grounding
connection equalizes the voltages of the two paths that return the surge
through the grounding connection of the 3-prong power line plug... Such
a solution is particularly attractive as an element of 'whole-house
protection'..."

None of the guides or papers talks about a complex engineering
installation. Apparently it is only complex to you.

The IEEE and NIST guides recognize plug-in surge suppressors as effective.

bud--

Power Conditioners Worth the Money?

Bud-- wrote:
Six ports comes from another paper by Francois Martzloff. No house has
the six ports. If you could read and think you could see the point of
the SRE paper is that SREs protect the 'six' ports:

So the kid plugs his Xbox into one of those two TVs. One of six ports
violated. Bud says this port does not exist? Then along comes the kid.
Now that port certainly exists. Damage may result.

Adjacent protector can even shunt a destructive transient into
appliance. They are shunt mode protectors. Where does a transient get
shunted to earth if the protector has no effective earthing?
Miraculously, equipotential alone will protect everything? Bull.
Even decades of experience say otherwise. Conductivity is required.

So what provides both equipotential and conducctivity? 'Whole house'
protectors.

Money wasted on plug-in protectors is better spent on a solution that
even Martzloff now defines as superior. Effective protection (that
costs so much less per protected appliance) means those two TVs are not
at 8000 volt risk. Now the protection system is not completely
violated even by a kid with an Xbox. Now the effective solution is not
violated by normal human activity. Now the transient has a path to
earth - which is defined by IEEE as absolutely necessary for effective
protection. It's also called 'whole house' protection.

Once Martzloff only recommended plug-in protectors. Now even
Martzloff is changing his tune. What is the superior solution
according to Martzloff? 'Whole house':
High-current surges ... are best diverted at the
service entrance of the premises.

What does Martzloff now acknowledge as he slowly moved to recommend a
well proven 'whole house' solution?
1) ... objectionable difference in reference voltages ... occur
even when or perhaps because, surge protective devices are
present at the point of connection of appliances.

Yes, sometimes a plug-in protector might provide protection.
Sometimes is called effective? A representative from plug-in
manufacturers calls that effective since profits are so high. He must
also deny what really is protection - earth ground - since plug-in
protectors have all but no earth ground.

Where do plug-in numerical specs claim such protection? Oh. No
numbers? No such claims? So Bud pretends this damning fact does not
exist. He will not even respond to that fact - no numerical specs even
from the manufacturer. Instead Bud cites Martzloff and ignores what
Martzloff also says:
1) ... objectionable difference in reference voltages ... occur
even when or perhaps because, surge protective devices are
present ...

Missing specs for protection? It can even contribute to damage of
the adjacent appliance. But it is effective? We just pretend those
six ports do not exist.

'SRE' paper even demonstrates how a kid with an Xbox violates
protection. So Bud suddenly claims all six ports do not exist in every
room. If true, then a human would never discharge static electricity.
Bud makes claims to promote his product. Listerine does same spin to
sell their products. Somehow a tooth brush and toothpaste is not as
effective as Listerine? A plug-in protector does not even claim in
writing such protection that Bud promotes. Bud ignores missing
specifications and pretends that Martzloff also did not say:
1) ... objectionable difference in reference voltages ... occur
even when or perhaps because, surge protective devices are
present ...

Martzloff now acknowledges the 'whole house' solution as superior
- effective. Which is why the long list of effective 'whole house'
protectors includes responsible names such as Square D, Siemens,
Intermatic, Leviton, Cutler-Hammer, and GE. Yes, same GE that once
only sold plug-in protectors back when Martzloff worked there is now
selling protectors that are earthed - are effective.

Power Conditioners Worth the Money?

w_tom wrote:

Bud-- wrote:

Six ports comes from another paper by Francois Martzloff. No house has
the six ports. If you could read and think you could see the point of
the SRE paper is that SREs protect the 'six' ports:

So the kid plugs his Xbox into one of those two TVs. One of six ports
violated. Bud says this port does not exist? Then along comes the kid.
Now that port certainly exists. Damage may result.

Martzloff's six ports to the external:
AC power
DC power
Control
Signal
Earth
Enclosure

Nothing in a house has 6 ports. Two are typical - power/earth and phone
or CATV. SREs are designed to protect the 'ports' that actually exist by
clamping the voltage on all wires to a common ground reference at the SRE.
Repeating Martzloff:
"The surge reference equalizer combines the protective function for both
system ports in the same enclosure. A common, single grounding
connection equalizes the voltages of the two paths that return the surge
through the grounding connection of the 3-prong power line plug... Such
a solution is particularly attractive as an element of 'whole-house
protection'..."

Once Martzloff only recommended plug-in protectors. Now even
Martzloff is changing his tune.

I am not aware Martzloff ever "only recommended plug-in protectors."

What is the superior solution
according to Martzloff? 'Whole house':

Repeating from Martzloff's 1999 guide for rural electrical customer
service reps:
"Whole house protection consists of a protective device at the service
entrance complemented by TVSSs [plug-in surge suppressors] for sensitive
appliances [electronic equipment] within the house."

Bud makes claims to promote his product.

Can't make your agrument based on its merits? I have never had any
interest in surge suppressors.

The IEEE guide, the NIST guide and Martzloff recognize plug-in
protectors as effective.

Never seen - a link from w_tom that says plug-in surge suppressors are
not effective.

bud--

Power Conditioners Worth the Money?

The room is enclosure - one of the six ports. Things such as linoleum
tile, heat ducts, concrete floors, etc can violate the sixth ports. If
any path to earth ground exists in that 'room local' SRE protection
then the entire system is compromised. Equipotential - the SRE
solution - demands that nothing connect to earth without going through
that plug-in protector.
'The sixth is electromagnetic coupling through the equipment
enclosure, directly into or out of the equipment inner circuits.

What connects directly into and out of the equipment inner circuits?
The Xbox is but one example. Human contact is another. The room - the
enclosure - must be carefully constructed as part of the specially
engineered SRE solution.

The same Martzloff paper then defines a superior solution:
High - cunent surges on the power system originating outside
of the user's premises, associated with lightning or major
power-system events, are best diverted at the service
entrance of the premises.

After defining the SRE solution, what does the paper then do?
Recommends another and better solution - 'whole house'.

The protection ('whole house') that costs less money is also
superior. So many reasons why include a kid with an Xbox that
completely vilolates one of those six ports. That sixth port does not
exist as long as we ban the kid as part of a complex engineering
solution. Meanwhile a plug-in protector hopes to be effective using
only equipotential when effective protectors (ie 'whole house') perform
both equipotential and conductivity - both are necessary.

Martzloff then moves on to define effective protection:
High-current surges ... are best diverted at the
service entrance of the premises.

IEEE also defines effective protection:
In actual practice, lightning protection is achieve by the
process of interception of lightning produced surges,
diverting them to ground ...

Ground? Plug-in protectors have no such earthing connection.
Manufacturers even avoid all discussion about earthing. No wonder those
manufacturers also do not claim effective protection in their numerical
specifications. An SRE solution does no earthing. It works - if the
human can carefully construct the room for all six ports - an
engineering analysis also called a faraday cage. Meanwhile we properly
earth the 'whole house' protector to protec everything - including the
Xbox - in that house. We therefore install superior and more effective
protection for every appliance at much less money.

The most damning part of plug-in protectors - besides the missing
earthing wire - is that the manufacturer does not even claim such
protection in his numerical specs.

Bud-- wrote:
w_tom wrote:
Bud-- wrote:
Six ports comes from another paper by Francois Martzloff. No house has
the six ports. If you could read and think you could see the point of
the SRE paper is that SREs protect the 'six' ports:

So the kid plugs his Xbox into one of those two TVs. One of six ports
violated. Bud says this port does not exist? Then along comes the kid.
Now that port certainly exists. Damage may result.

Martzloff's six ports to the external:
AC power
DC power
Control
Signal
Earth
Enclosure

Nothing in a house has 6 ports. Two are typical - power/earth and phone
or CATV.
...

Power Conditioners Worth the Money?

w_tom wrote:

The room is enclosure - one of the six ports.

Nope. "The sixth is electromagnetic coupling through the equipment
enclosure" - the the enclosure is the equipment enclosure. The SRE paper
shows how SREs protect against surges. Your distortions don't change
Martzloff's conclusion.

Ground? Plug-in protectors have no such earthing connection.

Yur religous views that protection is only possible by earthing are
irrelevant. The IEEE paper clearly shows how protection is provided by
clamping to a common reference point at the surge suppressor.

The IEEE guide, the NIST guide and Martzloff recognize plug-in
protectors as effective.

Still ever seen - a link from w_tom that says plug-in surge suppressors
are not effective.

bud--

Power Conditioners Worth the Money?

On Sat, 17 Jun 2006 10:30:01 -0700, "Kevin"
wrote:

Are power conditioners worth the money? I bought a Panamax for $250. The
sales guy said it would improve audio and video quality. Thoughts?

Two questions: Do you have a lot of noise on the picture? Is the
video quality good?

Unless you have enough noise to bother the picture on analog the
answer is no.

If you have enough noise to bother digital that is a real problem.

Next, there are few true power conditioners on the market today.
Most UPSs are no longer power conditioners. What are sold as power
conditioners are *usually* over voltage and spike protection rather
than power conditioners.

New UPSs with power conditioning are on the order of $1000 or more,
BUT you can find reconditioned trade ins for $200 to $400 USD or so.
They won't be the latest technology but they do work. I use APC and
have been happy with them so far. OTOH they do nothing for the
picture quality which is already good, but they do serve as protection
for some expensive equipment.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

Thank you,

Kevin

Roger

Power Conditioners Worth the Money?

On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 09:57:59 -0700, "rz" wrote:

"Kevin" wrote in message
news:[email protected]
Are power conditioners worth the money? I bought a Panamax for $250. The
sales guy said it would improve audio and video quality. Thoughts?

Thank you,

Kevin

I don't know what a Panamax is, but generally they are not worth the $$. In
the remote

With that "generally" thrown in I'd have to agree. It depends on the
individual installation and power.

area where I live, we have narrow corridors of trees for the high tension
lines. Each year

Likewise.

we have several major outages. It's not all that infrequent that some homes
in this area have very high voltage spikes.

Spikes aren't much of a problem here, but low voltage and brown outs,
or intermittent interruptions are.

So I have a real UPS. My house has a separate UPS
circuit connected to a 3kVA UPS and external battery set.

I didn't go that far. The computers, monitors, and TVs are on UPSs.
The house electrical feed comes in through a transfer switch so I use
either the mains or a 9500 watt generator although the generator only
powers the Freezer, refrigerator, Microwave, House lights, and
furnace. When on the generator we are without air-conditioning garage
lights and the garage doors become manual.

As the generator has been on-line over 100 hours in the last 5 years,
I'm thinking strongly of a natural gas powered 15 to 25 KW unit with
automatic transfer.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com

I guess I'm saying that it depends on your situation. My situation is
extreme, I have very
expensive equipment and frequent disturbances. If you decide that you need
something,
it should be able to disconnect from the grid as in a UPS.

I see that "surge suppressors" are rated in Joules these days. This is
good, provided they
can open their own circuit breaker without destroying themselves. I work
with the local
utility here and know of several cases where these surges suppressors have
caught on fire
during a nasty overvoltage situation.

-
Robert

Power Conditioners Worth the Money?

On 21 Jun 2006 00:01:08 -0700, "w_tom" wrote:

What good is a shunt mode protector when it does not have that
necessary earthing connection? Bud is right. Plug-in protectors don't
protect by shunting to earth because a necessary earthing wire does not
exist. Somehow that energy from a surge will have no where to go and
yet still not damage adjacent appliances. Funny. Even Ben Franklin in
1752 demonstrated earthing as important.

MOVs are shunt mode devices as responsible manufacturers note:

Metal Oxide Varistors have a number or limitations. I have one on the
bench rated for 50,000 joules. After a switching transit I've seen
where they used to be.:-)) There were just a pair of heavy wires
sticking straight out. (Man are they loud when they do that!)

http://www.telebyteusa.com/primer/ch6.htm
Conceptually, lightning protection devices are switches to ground.

They really aren't a switch. They are a voltage variable resistor.
They are pretty much an open circuit until the design threshold is
passed. Then they start to conduct, as the voltage (spike) goes higher
they conduct more. They also work on Dv/Dt or conduct more when
presented with faster rise times.

Once a threatening surge is detected, a lightning protection
device grounds the incoming signal connection point of the
equipment being protected. Thus, redirecting the threatening
surge on a path-of-least resistance (impedance) to ground
where it is absorbed.

And usually sacrificing itself to the cause. Although not necessarily
a one-shot device, each spike "hurts" the device and it's threshold
will eventually lower to the point of conducting the working voltage.

So what is required for protection? From
http://www.polyphaser.com/ppc_TD1023.aspx - an industry benchmark for
protection:

I'm a bit suspect of *some* of the information they put out as they
are selling the things and yes, I have a whole row of them where my
coax cables come in the house.

First and foremost, there should be only one ground system.
Second, the individual l/O protectors need to be co-located on the
same electrical ground plane.

I'm not sure who is arguing for what right here, but IEEE does
recommend a "single point ground" and I follow their recommendations.
I have antennas at 130 feet above ground. I have a 135 foot run of
Cat5e from the switch next to me that runs within 10 feet of the
tower base on the way to the computer in the shop.

The ground system consists of 32 or 33 eight foot ground rods Cad
Welded (TM) to over 600 feet of bare #2 copper. All grounds are tied
together

Co-located as in the short connection to earth. Why? IEEE defines
what is necessary for protection. IEEE Red Book (Std 141) recommends
protection:
In actual practice, lightning protection is achieve by the
process of interception of lightning produced surges,
diverting them to ground, ...

IEEE Green Book (IEEE 142):
Lightning cannot be prevented; it can only be intercepted or
diverted to a path which will, if well designed and constructed,
not result in damage.

A quote from a 1993 Martzloff paper:
High-current surges ... are best diverted at the
service entrance of the premises.

I would argue here due to rise times we should be more worried about
voltage spikes than current surges.

Bud's relationship with a plug-in manufacturer would explain why you
should ignore earthing. Plug-in protectors don't have that earthing
wire. You should assume energy from lightning will somehow not be
dissipated in earth AND still not cause appliance damage?

I'm not used to seeing the term "earthing", but rather grounding but I
assume we are talking about the same thing; a good earth ground.

Reality: no earth ground means no effective protection which is why
responsible manufacturers such as Leviton, Siemens, GE, Square D,
Cutler-Hammer, and Intermatic provide earthing wires on their 'whole
house' protectors - as even the IEEE defines as necessary. Earthing
is also why Ben Franklin's lightning rods are effective AND why all
high reliability facilities (911 emergency response centers, telephone
switching stations, AC power stations, commercial radio broadcasters,
etc) start a protection systems with even better earth grounds. The
effective protector can shunt - divert, connect - energy into earth
ground. Or the protector from a grocery store shelf will somehow
provide protection miraculously without any earthing connection - at
maybe tens times more money per protected appliance. Profit are that
high? No wonder Bud hopes you ignore that all so necessary earth
ground connection.

I have more invested in my ground system than many do in their
complete AV system. Then again that tower with the antennas gets hit
on average of 3 times a year although it's already taken at least 5
hits this year. That means that tower has been hit at least 17 times
(verified visually) and probably more. There are currently 13 cables
that come into the house through 3" conduit from that tower.

I've been running this computer while the one next to it was
transferring the contents of a large directory to the storage machine
in the shop. The tower took a direct hit. The lights went out, the
UPSs squealed, the lights came back on and the file transfer continued
on without dropping the connection. (BTW I do use cordless keyboards
and mice)

Rarely does anything get disconnected during a thunderstorm. For one
reason, but the time I could get behind the desk and get the stuff
disconnected the storm would be past. In addition I ain't touchin'
nothin' back there during a storm.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com
Roger

Power Conditioners Worth the Money?