Damsel in distress...

If you like to protect dragons and slain helpless damsels… er… I mean, the other way around…

Today we had a tiny little “apagon” of 12 hours in my hood. Upon returning, the electricity fried my TV set and my inverter. I was about to throw a hissyfit, but there was nobody to witness it, so I refrained and just called the technician. I asked what I could do to prevent that from happening again, he couldn’t give me a straight answer. Needless to say I won’t be having him fix my inverter till I can check other opinions. I am still questioning God’s fairness in frying two of the most expensive items in this humble home. I could have done without my iron and would have gladly departed with my washing machine.

So guys, Is there a thingy that I can buy to protect the whole apartment from power surges? Is it expensive? More expensive than my TV? Can I sue CDE? Ok, forget the last one.

I am taking donations now…

Trace sells the thingy you look for
it should cost you about 2000 pesos i hear.
you get it installed before the invertor so the whole house should be protected.

Pib,

Didn't your inverter have fuses in it? When I lived in SD, my inverter did, and that saved my equipment (inverter and the computer & fax connected to it) twice, by blowing the fuses before anything else.

As for the TV, most TV's sold in the DR come with something called an "autovolt" which supposedly protects the set from fluctuations. Not sure if it truly does or not. The set we bought in the DR had it and didn't blow, and the one we brought from the US didn't have it and did blow. But that doesn't prove anything, since they were rarely on at the same time....
Regards,
Keith

Get a GFCI protected outlet before the inverter ($6 US). Connect the inverter to it and use another GFCI outlet to connect everything else after the inverter. Make sure the ground is connected (a metel rod in the ground and connected to the neutral ground of the GFCI protector outlet.
Did I confuse you? I bet I did.
Ok, what it is is an outlet that has a reset switch on it. Whenever you have a surge or a spike (or even a shortage of wires) the switch opens up and your electrical / electronic equipment is protected.
Remember, make sure you have the neutral ground wire connected to the metel rod that is going into the ground.
Now go ahead and drink a beer, everything is better protected now than before.
P.S. good luck in finding GFCI protected outlet in santo domingo. I am sure they don't sell them there.

that I take a trip to the states to buy the darn gizmo?! This is when those donations would come handy.

Pib,

Are you in SD? If so, check with Ferreteria Americana. They might have it.
Regards,
Keith

"true on-line" power supply for maximum protection. I used to sell these things but I don't anymore so there is no profit motive here. The way it works is basically you have a battery operated AC power supply that constantly runs whatever you have plugged into it. Then it takes the AC power from your wall and constantly charges the batteries. THIS IS DIFFERENT than the way a normal UPS works, It runs your appliances off the wall current while trickle-charging the batteries and then switches over to the batteries once the power kicks off. The problem is if a big spike comes down and gets past the surge protectors it's too late. The damage is done and now you have an inversor powering a blown television or computer! With a true on-line design the surge would just juice the batteries, and the worst that could happen aside from a direct lightning hit is it would fry the back end of the power supply.

The next step you could do in addition to this is to install an isolation transformer but you are getting into $$$ and it may be overkill. I have included the link to my favorite brand below.

Pobrecito.

I will call you with details, but my engineers seem to feel that there are reasonable solutions to the surge problem and hopefully, the TV only has a blown fuse. The inverter might need a rewinding of the core, but that is not too expensive.

HB