Automatic Voltage Regulators, AVR, and Surge Protectors

[Viking]

Do you have these things in your homes?

If I understand it right they protect your electronic equipment from damage or breaking because of brownouts and variations of voltage. It is the expensive stuff like refridgerators, aircons, washingmachines, computers and tv:s I want to protect. 

Have you experienced any of the above mentioned problems in Philippines?

If you have AVR:s and/or surge protectors, do you have a big one for the entire house or several smaller ones, one for each machine? 

What do you recommend?

[Joey G]

Whole house surge protectors are best... they are often higher quality than the individual ones.  Also surge protectors actually do "wear down", and the smaller ones wear down faster and need replacement more often.

When there was just a TV and fridge, individual ones made sense... but yeah with all the new gadgets.... with the way electric works in the Philippines... whole house is the way to go.

[Clermont]

55 minutes ago, Joey G said:

but yeah with all the new gadgets.... with the way electric works in the Philippines... whole house is the way to go.

Thanks for that, a bloke knows all that but it is good to be reminded of these little things that often get overlooked in the excitement of buying a new house.

[Huggybearman]

3 hours ago, Joey G said:

When there was just a TV and fridge, individual ones made sense... but yeah with all the new gadgets.... with the way electric works in the Philippines... whole house is the way to go.

What happens if your ‘whole house’ unit stops working? I guess you have no electrics until you get it fixed? That could be quite a while here in the Philippines. Just a thought!

[BrettGC]

1 hour ago, Huggybearman said:

What happens if your ‘whole house’ unit stops working? I guess you have no electrics until you get it fixed? That could be quite a while here in the Philippines. Just a thought!

Just in case, we kept the protected multi-plug power boards from prior to having the big one installed.  No voltage regulation on them but at least you're protected from the surge.  You can buy in-line UPS (uninterrupted power supply) units but they can get a little spendy but they also provide surge protection, voltage regulation and battery backup with up to 10 power outlets.  I have a 5 outlet version here in Cairns (lots of lightning strikes in the tropical north of Australia) on my gaming PC (it's expensive) but didn't bother at the Negros house, as yet there's nothing there that needs to be shut down "gently".  

Hard earned experience of years of living in the tropics and losing expensive equipment makes me a little paranoid with regards to this.  

Edited February 23, 2021 by BrettGC

[Joey G]

2 hours ago, Huggybearman said:

What happens if your ‘whole house’ unit stops working? I guess you have no electrics until you get it fixed? That could be quite a while here in the Philippines. Just a thought!

True... but If that happens, then the whole house surge protector did it's job and saved you A LOT of $$$...  if getting a new one takes awhile... you could easily rewire and by pass the surge protector and go without protection for awhile.... and/or get individual surge protectors for the important/expensive stuff.  I swear in Eastern Samar there's a brownout once a week at minimum... going without is a total dice roll.

[Huggybearman]

2 hours ago, Joey G said:

True... but If that happens, then the whole house surge protector did it's job and saved you A LOT of $$$...  if getting a new one takes awhile... you could easily rewire and by pass the surge protector and go without protection for awhile.... and/or get individual surge protectors for the important/expensive stuff.  I swear in Eastern Samar there's a brownout once a week at minimum... going without is a total dice roll.

I agree, you should have surge protectors and/or AVR’s to protect your expensive equipment. Every item of ours is protected by individual AVR’s of a suitable wattage and the the entertainment center, (TV, DVD, PlayStation, internet etc is protected by a 2000 watt Inmarflex one from S&R. 
Being a dunce when it comes to electrical stuff I would feel very uneasy having all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. ie centralised whole house protection rather than individual units. 

Edited February 23, 2021 by Huggybearman
Added photo.

[Tommy T.]

12 hours ago, Viking said:

Do you have these things in your homes?

If I understand it right they protect your electronic equipment from damage or breaking because of brownouts and variations of voltage. It is the expensive stuff like refridgerators, aircons, washingmachines, computers and tv:s I want to protect. 

Have you experienced any of the above mentioned problems in Philippines?

If you have AVR:s and/or surge protectors, do you have a big one for the entire house or several smaller ones, one for each machine? 

What do you recommend?

First off, I could not recommend one system verses another, Viking.

However, I agree with some of the previous posters that having a whole house system - surge protector AND voltage regulator - makes a lot of sense. I found that not many folks here (in electrical supply shops) know much, if anything, about these. I wanted to install such an instrument for our new home and it was like pulling teeth to get information. I finally got tired of pushing and just bought a small UPS (uninterruptable power source) for one essential computer and our CCTV system. It will run the CCTV system and the PLDT fiber modem for upwards of an hour....

Our air/con guy said that the Panasonic units we purchased were rather robust and could withstand +/- 10% plus power fluctuations with no problems... But, of course, that will not cover a 300% surge or more from a lightning strike.

I am still looking around for a system or unit that we can use for whole house for, at least, automatic voltage regulation... I will post if/when I find this...

[Viking]

19 hours ago, Joey G said:

Whole house surge protectors are best... they are often higher quality than the individual ones.  Also surge protectors actually do "wear down", and the smaller ones wear down faster and need replacement more often.

When there was just a TV and fridge, individual ones made sense... but yeah with all the new gadgets.... with the way electric works in the Philippines... whole house is the way to go.

Whole house surge protector makes most sense to me and thnx for the info about them wearing down over time. I had no knowledge about that!

 

15 hours ago, BrettGC said:

Just in case, we kept the protected multi-plug power boards from prior to having the big one installed.  No voltage regulation on them but at least you're protected from the surge.  You can buy in-line UPS (uninterrupted power supply) units but they can get a little spendy but they also provide surge protection, voltage regulation and battery backup with up to 10 power outlets.  I have a 5 outlet version here in Cairns (lots of lightning strikes in the tropical north of Australia) on my gaming PC (it's expensive) but didn't bother at the Negros house, as yet there's nothing there that needs to be shut down "gently".  

Hard earned experience of years of living in the tropics and losing expensive equipment makes me a little paranoid with regards to this.  

UPS could also be a solution. But if I understand it right they are dimensioned on how many watts the gadgets need and it will fast get expensive if you will use one UPS to several aircons, a ref, a washingmachine, tv and computer. Having one UPS for each appliance is maybe more economical?? But then you will need alot of them! Do all electrical stuff need a gentle shutdown or is it mostly computers??

 

11 hours ago, Huggybearman said:

I agree, you should have surge protectors and/or AVR’s to protect your expensive equipment. Every item of ours is protected by individual AVR’s of a suitable wattage and the the entertainment center, (TV, DVD, PlayStation, internet etc is protected by a 2000 watt Inmarflex one from S&R. 
Being a dunce when it comes to electrical stuff I would feel very uneasy having all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. ie centralised whole house protection rather than individual units. 

I can see there is benefits both way with whole house AVR  vs one for each item. Kind of same situation as with the UPS. It feels more practical to me with one AVR for the whole house but it will also get expensive, since you will need a really large one! At the same time, it it will not be cheap to get maybe 7-8 individual AVR:s! And where to put all of them?

Many decisions to make 

Thank you all for your input!

[Huggybearman]

6 hours ago, Viking said:

UPS could also be a solution. But if I understand it right they are dimensioned on how many watts the gadgets need and it will fast get expensive if you will use one UPS to several aircons, a ref, a washingmachine, tv and computer. Having one UPS for each appliance is maybe more economical?? But then you will need alot of them! Do all electrical stuff need a gentle shutdown or is it mostly computers??

It would be very expensive to have a centralized UPS to run all your household appliances including aircon units. Remember these will be run from the UPS battery which would need to be HUGE to cater for the power demand. And you would also need a HUGE pure sine wave inverter which would be very expensive, if such a beast exists! 
 

Your UPS should just cater for your essential equipment which you would want to use during a brownout. Computer, internet modem, perhaps a fan and a light or two. You certainly wouldn’t want to run any power hungry items from it. All the UPS’ I have seen for sale here are very small units just really intended to run your computer for a short while while you save your work and shut the computer down. They are not designed or intended to run anything remotely power hungry. 
 

I built my own UPS using quality components (intelligent multi-stage charger, pure sine-wave inverter and a good quality deep cycle battery). That will run a computer, fan, internet modem and a couple of lights for several hours until the power comes back on. I made it because my wife teaches online and it will keep her going for a long time until either power is restored or I start up the little Honda genny that we have as a back-up.

Edited February 23, 2021 by Huggybearman