Surge protection from cheap 240v generators

A surge protector is worth while Instructions with scorpion generators sugest runing 100Watt globe to absorb any spikes.

Surge suppessors have a very limited capacity to absorb overvoltage. they are fine for brief transient spikes. Anything bigger or of longer duration they are incapable of absorbing the spike/surge.

As for a globe..... no a lot of use either. They will not have the capacity to absorb a large surge.

Cheap gensets are poorly regulated. I've seen 390V steady state out of one unit. Brand new, out of the box.

Some people have had good runs out of these units. Some have fried thousands of dollars of gear in the blink of an eye.

You may have some protection from power spikes with a power board that trips when overloaded (like mine just did when i was running the toaster and turned on the electric kettle), although i think it is designed to work the way it did for me, not as a guard against power spikes. For power surges you can purchase a power plug sized protector which will need replacing if it goes under a power spike (cost around $12-$16 at a guess).

Neither of these will offer any protection from damage which may be caused by a power drop.

Nor will they make pure sine wave electricity from a non sine wave generator.

Depends on the value of what you are likely to fry!


Motherhen

To summarise - a Surge Protecting power board is better than nothing - but there's still a good chance the voltage variations and non-sinewave will still damage delicate equipment.

Pauper,

When you fit some 'devices' to safeguard your electronic stuff, some will only trip the power, turning it off, would be a real bugga to get home and find your fridge full of warm food :-)

Maîneÿ . . .

Currently we are installing and testing two units patented and to complied to relevent standards and one is an RVD for inverters and one is an IFs for generators.

They react in 5 Milliseconds to faults and shut down the power.

They will replace earth stakes in hired equipment and are currently being fitted in Contractor pack hire generators by a major Australia supplier.

We are doing the inverters because that can then be a safe environment for children along with emergency personel at accidents and it protects person, equipment and the inverter from damage.

The items are suited to a floating power system and is about to be commercialsed in our market.

The trade name is Protex and I nicknamed it "The condom for power that protects you from a fatal dose".

Ian
Ian

We always ran an incandescent light bulb on the old gennies not to absorb spikes, but to pull them into 50 hertz, which they do very well.

Thankyou one and all for your interesting replies. I bought a new Bell Carrol 4 stroke 1Kva 240v generator off the web for $350.00 delivered. I am going to take a chance with it and run a clock radio/CD player, a DVD player and a 12v battery charger plus lights. If desperate will try recharging mobile phone. While inspecting the generator and motor prior to starting, I found half a page from what appeared to be a chinese newspaper in the fuel tank or maybe it was the operating instructions as no paper work came with the generator. Happy Days. Pauper.