Power Surges

[Jai Dee]

I'm about to start building my house and have been recommended to install a "Line Conditioner" to eliminate or minimise surges and spikes in the mains voltage supply to the house.

A friend of mine had one installed in his house, after he lost 3 TV's, a PC and a fridge one day whilst there was "maintenance work" being done on the electrical distribution system for the housing estate he lives in, and experienced a spike.

Has anyone had any experience with these?

Reliable brand names?

Any ideas of cost?

Where to buy them?

[lopburi3]

For a home most units would not be cost effective at all. The only place I would suggest using one, and this is for the UPS function, is your computer. Any good UPS with line filter. I have had home in Bangkok for 30 years and have never lost anything due to electric surge so believe the odds are with you.

[Thetyim]

I agree with Lopburi

The only thing I can add is that I lost a TV from lightning and no line conditioner will protect you from that.

[jimmi]

I plan on starting to build my house in about a year. I definitely plan to install a Sensitive Equipment AC to AC Isolation Transformer in my house. I live and will be building my house in Isaan. The voltage in this area is full of niose, spikes and surges. I have not priced the tranformers in Thailand yet, but in America they run about $800 for a 25KVA, up to about $1300 for a 25KVA constaant voltage model. I will also put in a step down or auto transformer so I can have some 110VAC outlets in my house. Putting this in during constuction is the best time to install it. If you can afford it, I say go for it.

[lopburi3]

aWhy not go all out and install a motor-generator and make your own electric power.

IMHO a waste of money as the power is not all that bad here - the biggest problem is when they switch over and you have brief outage but nothing but a whole house UPS is going the help that.

As for 110 outlets how are you going to know which is 110 or 220 as the outlets are the same here? I would not bring any 110 appliance here if it uses a motor or transformer as they are likely rated only for 60hz current and running them on 50hz is likely to cause them to overheat. Anything that uses cheap hz clocking will also be a write off here. I would highly advise buying local rather than trying to make your home "American".

At any rate good luck with your construction. Just getting a ground wire installed correctly will probably take your intervention.

[doctormann]

Not so much a voltage surge as a voltage reduction ...

In my village in Pattaya we seem to be having voltage reduction problems from time to time. I haven't measured the voltage but I estimate a 30% reduction - enough make filament lamps glow pretty dimly although TVs still work as the power supplies can cope with this. More importantly, anything that uses an electric motor (air con units for instance) stops operating. The reduced voltage is still getting to the motor but the cooling fan is now not working so there is a tendency for the motor to overheat. I don't know if this is serious but I suspect that the re-settable thermal trip on one of my air con units did operate because, when full power was restored, it took some time for the unit to become operational again.

Anyone know anything or experienced any permanent damage to equipment?

[Tornado]

UPS everything as Lopburi has stated - I have 6 UPS' and have never lost a thing due to spikes, but have heard the UPS doing its job many times.

[Jai Dee]

Not so much a voltage surge as a voltage reduction ...

In my village in Pattaya we seem to be having voltage reduction problems from time to time. 

I too am building my place not far from Pattaya... in Na-Jomtien actually. I think that BKK's power supply is much more reliable than Pattaya's, and dependent on the area and the supply provided by your housing developer, you may or may not experience problems.

My mate who installed a line conditioner lives in a fairly new (3 years old) housing estate in Jomtien. His investment in the conditioner was to the tune of about 25,000 THB, which, if you consider the replacement costs of even 1 good quality 29" TV set, would be worth it.

[Tornado]

a UPS only cost about 2000 baht - much cheaper, even if you buy 6.

[Jai Dee]

a UPS only cost about 2000 baht - much cheaper, even if you buy 6.

Thanks Torny.

As a UPS usually has line coditioning built in, that would solve any potential spikes/dips problems.

What is the usual length of time that the battery backup on the UPS gives?

[Crossy]

a UPS only cost about 2000 baht - much cheaper, even if you buy 6.

Thanks Torny.

As a UPS usually has line coditioning built in, that would solve any potential spikes/dips problems.

What is the usual length of time that the battery backup on the UPS gives?

It depends on the load, most of the cheapies are rated for 5-15 minutes on full load, enough time to save and shut down.

[davethailand]

Anti surge power blocks but you need to be earthed for them to work.

I've just installed thses and 2 voltage stabalizers in the blue factory after a 40000bht autocurve processer bit the dust.

[lopburi3]

Anti surge power blocks but you need to be earthed for them to work.

I've just installed thses and 2 voltage stabalizers in the blue factory after a 40000bht autocurve processer bit the dust.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Something like that I can see using stabilizers but for home use believe they are total overkill (and the stabilizer is likely to be more of a problem than what it tries to prevent if my 30 years experience is typical). In most cases here a 29" tv would not cost more than a few hundred baht to fix in any case.

[Thetyim]

What is the usual length of time that the battery backup on the UPS gives?

A typical UPS for 2000 baht has a 12v 7Ah battery inside so you can calculate it from that.

The invertor will be about 80per cent efficient

[andy50]

seems crazy to me that the power company charge 4bht a unit , but cant guarantee the supply wont blow your appliances to bits from time to time

[paulfr]

seems crazy to me that the power company charge 4bht a unit , but cant guarantee the supply wont blow your appliances to bits from time to time

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Andy

It is really the responsibility of the engineers at the appliance/device manufacturer that needs to take care of this. A few small components added to the front end power section can go a long way protecting you from problems (restarts are component burnup). But many/most devices are consumer products which are very cost sensitive to remain competitive and the bean counters put pressure on engineering to remove them.

The power company can never guarantee power will not go away for some short period of time. It would be too costly in terms of redundancy requirements to accomplish never fail service. Even in parts of San Francisco. CA, power drops occur regularly and computer users need UPS protection if the computer is integral to their business. So in LOS .....

If you are concerned, get a good UPS or just a line conditioner.