Surge Protector

Stephen,

You shouldn't need surge protection.
It would be very unlikely for a small generator to give a power surge.

Surge protection is very practical to protect sensitive equipment connected to the normal household supply because a surge can be caused by mutiple things, such as lightening somewhere on the power grid, or a transformer chitting itself, or some other malfunction at the power station, or even a vehicle coming into contact with a power pole.

A portable generator however is immune from this sort of impact and unless the engine is suddenly fed nitrous oxide causing the engine to increase its speed considerably, your pretty safe mate.

Get a surge protector....although "most" generators are unlikely to spike, you never know what might happen. Also some act as a residual current device for upto 30 seconds which may allow you to switch stuff off, like computers if it suddenly stops.

We use one of the Bunnings type at home due to the power problems here in SE QLD during the storms which ended up shortening the life of our computer's power system.

Like carrying a second spare, its better to have some insurance than none.

Gday Stephen

I don't know how good the bunnings jobbie would be, but I would recomend 1. We fry a bit of stuff every now and then, so the computer is on one all the time at home. I was warned a while back about the cheap 2 stroke gennies and spikes - when they run out of fuel some rev a lot higher as they die - My old lawnmower did this, so it may be just a 2 stroke problem.

Cheers Andrew

Surge protectors? Smurge protectors!

Unless you want to pay a lot of money for a surge protector I suspect you are wasting your time. Now I haven’t researched this extensively but here’s a bit of what I have done:

Site Link
Costs US$70 and will protect from up to 3000J

Site Link
Costs US$30 and will protect up to 375J

Sounds good eh?

3000 Joules is equivalent to 0.000 833 333 kilowatt hour – which is not a lot!

I suspect most of these domestic “surge protectors” are simply a MOV
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varistor
Site Link

MOVs have their place in mains use and it’s to clean very short (micro to millisecond) high voltage spikes, it is not uncommon to see spikes up to 2000V on the mains and if these can be quenched before they get near any electronics that is a “Good Thing” :)

It is most unlikely small generators would ever produce this sort of spike, they are far more likely to go over or under voltage by a “bit” for a short period of time and I, seriously, doubt that the MOV in your surge suppressor would even go into conduction during this phase and if your gen goes seriously over voltage it’ll burn the MOV up before you can say “smoke”, which, if you’re lucky may trip the breaker but probably won’t.

It’s your money but I don’t use one on my $98 GMC.

Comments, corrections, anyone?

Mike Harding

mike_harding@fastmail.fm

I would be looking into something with RCD protection for camping as well. It is a handy thing to have. You never know it could save your life.

If you are really concerned, run your sensitive devices such as the computer and fridge off a 12 volt supply using an inverter. This will protect your gear much better.

Then, if you must, use the gennie to maintain a charge in your battery(s) via a charger.