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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => AC Power and Grounding => Topic started by: Mike Sokol on July 30, 2014, 01:53:20 PM
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I'm pleased to announce that SurgeX will be participating in the next LED Talks beginning Aug 18th and will monitor and answer your posts for a period of one week from that day. Martin Dornfeld, Northern Regional Manager and Director of Consultant Engagement for SurgX will be leading this discussion. In the meantime, please post any preliminary questions you have about surge protection in general and SurgeX products specifically on this thread. I'll pass them onto SurgeX in advance, then begin a new thread on Aug 18th for our official LED Talk session.
Mike Sokol
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Let me prime the pump with a few general questions. I know the answer to a lot of these, but remember we're asking questions for everyone here.
What makes SurgeX technology different from surge strips you can buy in a hardware store?
Will any of these surge protection technologies stop dimmer buzz from getting into amplifiers and speakers?
Will any SurgeX products help prevent brownout conditions (low voltage)?
Will any SurgeX products help with over-voltage conditions?
Will they help prevent damage from nearby lightning strikes?
Do your products draw any appreciable power while nothing in the room is turned on?
Is there anything in them that "wears out" like MOV devices or whatever?
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The one that took a bit of study to get my head around is the statement I have heard that if you have a system fed by two different circuits in different parts of a building (Such as amps at the front and the sound board at FOH) and you don't use SurgeX, you are better off with no protection then with MOV protection at each end. I understand it and use SurgeX but I am sure there explanation will be much better then mine.
BTW The SurgeX advantages are not well understood by the regular population and therefor there products often go for very reasonable prices on Ebay.
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The one that took a bit of study to get my head around is the statement I have heard that if you have a system fed by two different circuits in different parts of a building (Such as amps at the front and the sound board at FOH) and you don't use SurgeX, you are better off with no protection then with MOV protection at each end. I understand it and use SurgeX but I am sure there explanation will be much better then mine.
BTW The SurgeX advantages are not well understood by the regular population and therefor there products often go for very reasonable prices on Ebay.
Good question. Is this really true? If so, what's the mechanism? I'm thinking that you're considering the antenna effect of all the signal connections running between the gear. I know there's something called a lightning side-flash which can occur between non grounded but powered gear and building metal. Is that what you're referring to? So do SurgeX products remove enough of that lightning energy from the AC lines to prevent this from happening?
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Good question. Is this really true? If so, what's the mechanism? I'm thinking that you're considering the antenna effect of all the signal connections running between the gear. I know there's something called a lightning side-flash which can occur between non grounded but powered gear and building metal. Is that what you're referring to? So do SurgeX products remove enough of that lightning energy from the AC lines to prevent this from happening?
Let me take a shot at it and then SurgeX can react to what I write.
Assume you have a mixer at FOH plugged into a MOV protected Power source. This mixer is connected to a amp at the front of the church and that amp is plugged into another MOV protected power source.
You get a spike on the amp circuit. (Perhaps a nearby lightning hit) The MOV does its job and shunts this spike to ground. This spike is somewhere in the 1000 to 2000 volt range. Well actually it shunts the spike to the green safety ground wire. BIG difference. We tend to think of ground as a big perfect sink for all things electrical. In this case we have connected a high voltage thus high current spike to a few hundred feet of #12 wire. The #12 wire instantly looks up ohms law and decides to have a voltage between the safety ground connection at the surge suppressor and the ground buss in the breaker panel. So, for an instant, there is a high voltage at the safety ground connection for the amp. This voltage is applied to pin one on the amp, and to the shields coming from the mixer, and to pin one on the mixer. The mixer finds itself connected to a voltage divider half way between the high voltage on pin one at the amp and it's own 100 ft run to the breaker panel.
Unhappy mixer.
A little help here SurgeX
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I was hooking up a little backyard PA system for a family picnic over the weekend, and noticed that my surge strip had an indicator light supposedly testing the "surge protection". Yeah, this was only a $20 MOV protected strip and not too fancy. So are those "surge protection" lights for real? Do they really test the MOV devices to make sure they haven't had too many voltage spikes and are dead? Or are the lights just on all the time to make you FEEL protected?
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I was hooking up a little backyard PA system for a family picnic over the weekend, and noticed that my surge strip had an indicator light supposedly testing the "surge protection". Yeah, this was only a $20 MOV protected strip and not too fancy. So is those "surge protection" lights for real? Do they really test the MOV devices to make sure they haven't had too many voltage spikes and are dead? Or are the lights just on all the time to make you FEEL protected?
Never having bothered to take the case off one, my WAG is that the led is downstream of the MOV, so that if/when the MOV is dead, no more little green light. "Dead" versus "not completely dead" isn't much of a test, but arguably better than nothing. I look forward to being educated by SurgeX. Mark C.
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Here's another question from CSC
Mike
Are Furman and Juice Goose power conditioners also surge protectors, or are
both conditioners and protectors needed together? How do UPS units fare at
these jobs? What's the hookup order if all are needed?
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Let me take a shot at it and then SurgeX can react to what I write.
Assume you have a mixer at FOH plugged into a MOV protected Power source. This mixer is connected to a amp at the front of the church and that amp is plugged into another MOV protected power source.
You get a spike on the amp circuit. (Perhaps a nearby lightning hit) The MOV does its job and shunts this spike to ground. This spike is somewhere in the 1000 to 2000 volt range. Well actually it shunts the spike to the green safety ground wire. BIG difference. We tend to think of ground as a big perfect sink for all things electrical. In this case we have connected a high voltage thus high current spike to a few hundred feet of #12 wire. The #12 wire instantly looks up ohms law and decides to have a voltage between the safety ground connection at the surge suppressor and the ground buss in the breaker panel. So, for an instant, there is a high voltage at the safety ground connection for the amp. This voltage is applied to pin one on the amp, and to the shields coming from the mixer, and to pin one on the mixer. The mixer finds itself connected to a voltage divider half way between the high voltage on pin one at the amp and it's own 100 ft run to the breaker panel.
Unhappy mixer.
A little help here SurgeX
MOV based "surge suppressors", whether $10 strip, or higher end rack-mount product, will shunt surge energy to either the neutral, or ground. This means that the better part of 6,000 volts and 3,000 amps (maximum surge energy before arch over) could be introduced to the ground (pin one, cable shields, power supply zero reference ground, etc.), and that energy will follow the lowest impedance path to "wherever". Additionally, a percentage of that surge energy still gets through to the connected equipment on the "hot”. That's why they are called "suppressors". If you have a direct, or extremely close, lightning strike, then you will likely be exposed to the associated electromagnetic pulse, which will simply induce itself onto anything and everything that is not otherwise shielded. SurgeX's surge elimination technology will stop the maximum voltage/amperage that could be carried by a branch circuit (even in the event of lightning) before the building wiring is actually compromised.
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MOV based "surge
Please read the posting rules and fix your displayed name as required.
Mac
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Here's another question from CSC
Mike
Are Furman and Juice Goose power conditioners also surge protectors, or are
both conditioners and protectors needed together? How do UPS units fare at
these jobs? What's the hookup order if all are needed?
Some folks equate power conditioning to voltage regulation, but power conditioning generally refers to a solution that provides surge protection and additional “conditioning” such as AC noise filtering. UPS products, including double conversion online units, are great for providing steady power when the voltage is unstable, or there is a power outage. However, they are not designed to handle major surges, and they do little (if anything) to address issues like common mode noise. My recommendation is to put a SurgeX surge eliminator/power conditioner in front of the UPS. We actually offer bundled solutions that include both the UPS and one of our surge eliminator/power conditioners.
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Some folks equate power conditioning to voltage regulation, but power conditioning generally refers to a solution that provides surge protection and additional “conditioning” such as AC noise filtering. UPS products, including double conversion online units, are great for providing steady power when the voltage is unstable, or there is a power outage. However, they are not designed to handle major surges, and they do little (if anything) to address issues like common mode noise. My recommendation is to put a SurgeX surge eliminator/power conditioner in front of the UPS. We actually offer bundled solutions that include both the UPS and one of our surge eliminator/power conditioners.
Hi Martin, and welcome to the forum.
I appreciate that you might be inclined to say "My recommendation is to put a SurgeX surge eliminator/power conditioner in front of the UPS" as that's who you work for. However most of the readers here have no exposure to the technology used to address power issues beyond the binary "it works - or not."
Rather than a blanket recommendation via a generic brand reference (there is more than 1 SurgeX product), how about discussing what constitutes "power quality", the effects of certain PQ aspects on the kinds of equipment we use, and how SurgeX addresses those issues. It's fair to talk about what can't be fixed at various spending levels and to compare other technologies purported to "condition" power.
Thanks for your participation, have fun!
Tim Mc
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MOV based "surge suppressors", whether $10 strip, or higher end rack-mount product, will shunt surge energy to either the neutral, or ground....
Hey Martin... You're not due to start answering questions until your LED Talk begins next Monday. I'll start a new thread for you at that time and then you can start your official LED Talk. I think you're going to have some interesting information for everyone here. ;D
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Never having bothered to take the case off one, my WAG is that the led is downstream of the MOV, so that if/when the MOV is dead, no more little green light. "Dead" versus "not completely dead" isn't much of a test, but arguably better than nothing. I look forward to being educated by SurgeX. Mark C.
Interesting, isn't it? I've personally seen one MOV protected power strip with the MOV shorted out by a nearby lightning strike. In that case the circuit breaker wouldn't reset since it was seeing the shorted MOV. But I believe that a bunch of lesser spikes would open up the MOV. If so, then your hypothesis could be correct. So another question for SurgeX would be exactly HOW do MOV devices fail most of the time? Shorted or Open or something else?
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Refer to the diagram below. It's been about 10 years ago, so I don't recall many details, but one of my customers suffered a fair amount of damage during a thunderstorm. A significant surge propagated through their network across several buildings on campus, damaging several network devices. I don't know where the surge entered the system.
They have since done some rebuilding, so the server closet is now electrically isolated from the rest of the campus by fiber. However, the remainder of the infrastructure is still in place, and several buildings are still connected by copper wire. You'll notice from the diagram that buildings "A" and "B" are connected by short-haul DSL modems using a copper pair from the telephone system. Buildings "B" and "C" are connected by 10Base2 coax. These connections are still vulnerable; what solutions could we implement to prevent a future lightning strike from propagating from building to building and causing similar damage?
Replacing the links with fiber would be prohibitively expensive. The entire campus -- a heavy industrial manufacturing facility -- is paved. There are city streets between some of the buildings, making permitting difficult. We may end up installing WiFi links at some point.
Even though my application is a computer network, the concept could still apply to a large installed or temporary audio system. For example, if lightning strikes on or near a signal line, the voltage spike can come "in the back door" and no amount of fancy power supply protection will help.
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Hey Martin... You're not due to start answering questions until your LED Talk begins next Monday. I think you're going to have some interesting information for everyone here. ;D
Everyone: I'm going to simply rename this initial announcement thread and see how it works for the talk. That should simplify replying to questions with quotes.
Martin: Your LED Talk begins now and runs until midnight on Aug 24th. At that time I'll ask everyone to wrap it up and I'll lock this thread. Thanks so much for participating in our LED Talks. I'm sure we're all going to learn a lot about your technology.
Mike Sokol
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The SurgeX LED Talk begins today and they will monitor and answer your posts about surge protection for a period of one week, until midnight Aug 24th.
Martin Dornfeld, Northern Regional Manager and Director of Consultant Engagement for SurgeX will be leading this discussion. Let's use this important resource to our advantage and educate ourselves about surge technology in general and SurgeX products that are useful to the pro-sound and lighting industries. Also, please use this opportunity to offer suggestions about features you would would like to see in future SurgeX products. This is a two-way street, so let's get busy and learn some important stuff.
Martin, welcome to the LED Talks...
Mike Sokol
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The SurgeX LED Talk begins today and they will monitor and answer your posts about surge protection for a period of one week, until midnight Aug 18th.
Wow, that is sure a short "week".... Aug 18 to midnight Aug 18.
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Wow, that is sure a short "week".... Aug 18 to midnight Aug 18.
Oops.... That would be until Aug 24th. Duh!!! ::)
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Some folks equate power conditioning to voltage regulation, but power conditioning generally refers to a solution that provides surge protection and additional “conditioning” such as AC noise filtering. UPS products, including double conversion online units, are great for providing steady power when the voltage is unstable, or there is a power outage. However, they are not designed to handle major surges, and they do little (if anything) to address issues like common mode noise. My recommendation is to put a SurgeX surge eliminator/power conditioner in front of the UPS. We actually offer bundled solutions that include both the UPS and one of our surge eliminator/power conditioners.
Martin: Can you show a typical example of a surge eliminator / power conditioner. I think that most of use here are worried about protecting our digital mixing consoles which are likely under 1,000 watts power draw. They don't need to have a lot of battery backup time, just a few minutes should be sufficient for most live sound applications.
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Martin,
There's another thread discussing power line "surges" that you could comment on: http://forums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/topic,151030.msg1385160.html#new
Please keep your comments on this LED Thread.
Mike Sokol
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Everyone,
We've had a delay with the start of the SurgeX LED Talk. Martin was out on an unscheduled business trip and just returned last night. Hopefully he's back to his office today and can begin his LED Talk. So whenever he starts, I'll extend his talk time for a full week.
Mike Sokol
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Let me prime the pump with a few general questions. I know the answer to a lot of these, but remember we're asking questions for everyone here.
What makes SurgeX technology different from surge strips you can buy in a hardware store?
Will any of these surge protection technologies stop dimmer buzz from getting into amplifiers and speakers?
Will any SurgeX products help prevent brownout conditions (low voltage)?
Will any SurgeX products help with over-voltage conditions?
Will they help prevent damage from nearby lightning strikes?
Do your products draw any appreciable power while nothing in the room is turned on?
Is there anything in them that "wears out" like MOV devices or whatever?
The attached file provides a general overview of our Advanced Series Mode surge elimination and other core technologies, including our COUVS over/under voltage protection. The technology is able to withstand the most surge energy that can be present on a branch circuit, even in the event of a nearby lightning strike (6,000V & 3,000A). Unlike traditional "surge suppressors" which simply divert surge energy to the ground, or neutral, our technology completely eliminates the surge without causing ground/neutral wire contamination (which is critical in integrated AV systems).
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The attached file provides a general overview of our Advanced Series Mode surge elimination and other core technologies, including our COUVS over/under voltage protection. The technology is able to withstand the most surge energy that can be present on a branch circuit, even in the event of a nearby lightning strike (6,000V & 3,000A). Unlike traditional "surge suppressors" which simply divert surge energy to the ground, or neutral, our technology completely eliminates the surge without causing ground/neutral wire contamination (which is critical in integrated AV systems).
Tom, so do the inductors listed in the first stage form a single-order low-pass filter in series with the incoming power? I'm guessing that part of the trick for good surge suppression is to begin with filtering the high-frequency energy "spike" using a series inductance, rather than using a brute-force short to ground which is how a MOV works. And a MOV simply shorting this energy to "ground" is what causes "ground" contamination. Am I thinking about this correctly?
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Tom, so do the inductors listed in the first stage form a single-order low-pass filter in series with the incoming power? I'm guessing that part of the trick for good surge suppression is to begin with filtering the high-frequency energy "spike" using a series inductance, rather than using a brute-force short to ground which is how a MOV works. And a MOV simply shorting this energy to "ground" is what causes "ground" contamination. Am I thinking about this correctly?
You got it. The core technology is a low pass filter in series with the AC.
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Let me take a shot at it and then SurgeX can react to what I write.
Assume you have a mixer at FOH plugged into a MOV protected Power source. This mixer is connected to a amp at the front of the church and that amp is plugged into another MOV protected power source.
You get a spike on the amp circuit. (Perhaps a nearby lightning hit) The MOV does its job and shunts this spike to ground. This spike is somewhere in the 1000 to 2000 volt range. Well actually it shunts the spike to the green safety ground wire. BIG difference. We tend to think of ground as a big perfect sink for all things electrical. In this case we have connected a high voltage thus high current spike to a few hundred feet of #12 wire. The #12 wire instantly looks up ohms law and decides to have a voltage between the safety ground connection at the surge suppressor and the ground buss in the breaker panel. So, for an instant, there is a high voltage at the safety ground connection for the amp. This voltage is applied to pin one on the amp, and to the shields coming from the mixer, and to pin one on the mixer. The mixer finds itself connected to a voltage divider half way between the high voltage on pin one at the amp and it's own 100 ft run to the breaker panel.
Unhappy mixer.
A little help here SurgeX
Martin, can you comment on this?
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Martin, can you comment on this?
In the event of a nearby lightning strike an effective MOV based surge suppressor could actually dump the better part of 6,000V to the safety ground, and yes it will take the path of least resistance. The safety ground is tied to pin one, as well as the ground of audio cables and the comparative reference for the internal "zero volt" ground in switch mode power supplies. It has the potential to make a lot of things unhappy. Shunting to ground (or neutral) is not a good thing in integrated audio systems.
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Martin, I am not an engineer or an electician (so I hope I'm not asking a dumb question), but if the energy doesn't get shunted to ground, I assume that it can only otherwise be dissipated by being changed into heat. Is that the case? If so, how much heat can be safely dissipated in a rack-mount device? If not, what happens? Mark C.
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Martin, I am not an engineer or an electician (so I hope I'm not asking a dumb question), but if the energy doesn't get shunted to ground, I assume that it can only otherwise be dissipated by being changed into heat. Is that the case? If so, how much heat can be safely dissipated in a rack-mount device? If not, what happens? Mark C.
Great question! The inductors provide resistance to the high frequency energy associated with the surge. With the two inductors wound in opposite directions, we are also developing offsetting voltage between the two in order to further cancel the surge. Technically, the energy is dissipated as nominal heat via the inductors. However, since all of this is happening in a millisecond timeframe this “heat” never has a chance to build. As a result, there is no impact on BTU ratings.
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In the event of a nearby lightning strike an effective MOV based surge suppressor could actually dump the better part of 6,000V to the safety ground, and yes it will take the path of least resistance. The safety ground is tied to pin one, as well as the ground of audio cables and the comparative reference for the internal "zero volt" ground in switch mode power supplies. It has the potential to make a lot of things unhappy. Shunting to ground (or neutral) is not a good thing in integrated audio systems.
I think this is the big takeaway. If you can't afford surgex for a sound system, use nothing. If you need a bunch of outlets don't use a power strip with MOVs. This is what pushed me to get two surgeX one for the booth and one for the amp rack up front. The good news is that some surgeX models have sequential power on and off and low voltage control for the other surgeX so that adds some value.
The other good news is that these things seem to be under valued on ebay
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Martin,
This all makes sense for installed systems, but what can us portable guys do about lightning and surge protection. Which of your products are suited for portable sound systems and how would you deploy them when there's separate Front of House and Stage power that needs to be protected? And yes, there's typically going to be some sort of copper connecting FOH and the Stage, even with digital snakes.
Mike Sokol
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Hi;
I really thought this would be a busy topic as lousy power can be so problematic.
How about the challenge of really noisy power like that contaminated with harmonics induced into the neutral as well as the lines like from non power factor corrected switching power supplies used in lighting, and or inverter driven motors and the like?
I have had to cascade transformers to reduce noise to tolerable levels in the past.
I haven't perused the SurgeX site in some time and probably should have prior to posting but the clock is about to run out on this thread so I shot from the hip.
It seems that the coils in your lightning suppression defense system might have some effect on this? Are there products in the SurgeX line that are capable of dealing with this type of problem? Shielded isolation transformer based or?
Sincerely, thank you!
Barry.
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Since Martin has been traveling every day and had limited time to answer his LED Talk questions, I've extended his time through the weekend. So get your questions in NOW.
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Hi;
I really thought this would be a busy topic as lousy power can be so problematic.
How about the challenge of really noisy power like that contaminated with harmonics induced into the neutral as well as the lines like from non power factor corrected switching power supplies used in lighting, and or inverter driven motors and the like?
I have had to cascade transformers to reduce noise to tolerable levels in the past.
I haven't perused the SurgeX site in some time and probably should have prior to posting but the clock is about to run out on this thread so I shot from the hip.
It seems that the coils in your lightning suppression defense system might have some effect on this? Are there products in the SurgeX line that are capable of dealing with this type of problem? Shielded isolation transformer based or?
Sincerely, thank you!
Barry.
The coils will in fact address high frequency noise on the AC. Our products also have an impedance tolerant EMI/RFI filter that addresses both normal and common mode noise. We can generally get 4+ volts of common mode noise down to under a half volt.
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Martin,
This all makes sense for installed systems, but what can us portable guys do about lightning and surge protection. Which of your products are suited for portable sound systems and how would you deploy them when there's separate Front of House and Stage power that needs to be protected? And yes, there's typically going to be some sort of copper connecting FOH and the Stage, even with digital snakes.
Mike Sokol
Depending on the set up, there are a couple of options. Any racks that you bring to the venue should have one of our rack mount products with our COUVS over/under voltage protection. This will not only protect from nearby lightning, but also the occasional mis-wired circuit, or lifted neutral. If you have a digital console, or other gear that can’t go down during the show, I would suggest one of our double conversion online UPSs. These are also great for venues with generator power. If you are tying your gear into a house system, you should consider our stand-alone units, like the SA-20. You can bring them to the venue to protect the house system during the event. If both FOH and stage are protected with SurgeX, there would be no issue with surge energy being dumped to ground, so your system interconnects would not be contaminated as a result.
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Martin,
You offer two types of UPS units Li and Ol. Can you explain the differences and the applications for each?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Thank you Sir.
Barry.