Surge protection
A power strip protects what is plugged into it. It does nothing for your air conditioner, your furnace board, your well pump or anything else wired directly to a circuit.
Why it matters
Mostly it covers the equipment you cannot unplug — which is also the equipment that costs the most to replace.
Your air conditioner, furnace control board, well pump, water heater, oven, garage door opener and every hard-wired smoke alarm are connected directly to circuits. No amount of plug-in protection reaches any of them. Those are also, with the exception of the electronics, the most expensive things on the list to replace.
The everyday sources are internal: motors switching off and inductive loads collapsing send transients back down the circuits they share. An air conditioning compressor cycling, a well pump starting, a large motor stopping. These are small, frequent, and cumulative — which is why the damage usually shows up as electronics that fail early rather than as anything dramatic.
Switching operations, capacitor banks, a recloser operating after a fault, or power restored after an outage all put transients onto the service. Because they arrive on the service conductors, they reach every circuit in the house simultaneously — which is the case a device at the panel is positioned for and a device at an outlet is not.
A panel-mounted device handles what arrives on the service, and takes the large events. Point-of-use protection at sensitive equipment handles what is generated inside the house downstream of the panel, and clamps closer to the equipment. They address different sources, so the sensible arrangement is both rather than either — the panel device does not make the strips redundant.
A surge protective device diverts energy to ground, so the quality of the grounding and bonding is what determines whether it can. This is why the install is not simply bolting a device into a spare breaker space: if the grounding electrode system is inadequate or bonding is incomplete, the device has nowhere to send anything and its rating becomes theoretical.
Being straight about it
This service is sold on overstatement more often than most, so here is the boundary.
A surge protective device will not stop a direct lightning strike, and nobody should tell you otherwise. It does not replace grounding — it depends on it. It does not make point-of-use protection unnecessary, because it sits upstream of transients generated inside the house. And it does not last indefinitely: the components degrade as they work, so the indicator matters.
What it does is intercept the great majority of surge activity, which arrives on the service and reaches every circuit at once, before it reaches equipment that has no other protection. On a house with panel work already planned, adding it at the same time costs very little extra, because the labour overlaps almost entirely.
Useful to include: a photograph of your panel with the cover on, so the type and available space are visible, and anything you have already lost to a surge. The panel is what determines whether this is a simple addition.
Request a QuoteQuestions
Not a direct strike. The energy in a direct lightning strike is far beyond what any surge protective device is built to absorb, and any claim otherwise should be treated with suspicion. What these devices do address is the much more common category: nearby strikes coupling energy onto the lines, utility switching events, and transients generated inside the house. That is most surge activity by a wide margin, so the protection is worth having — it is simply worth having for the right reason.
Yes, and the two are not doing the same job. The panel device intercepts what arrives on the service and takes the large events. Point-of-use protectors clamp closer to the equipment and handle transients generated inside the house, downstream of the panel, which the panel device sits upstream of and cannot see. Layered protection is the normal recommendation, so keep the strips on the computer and the television.
Most are installed at the panel, either taking a breaker position or mounted alongside and connected through one, and the connection to the busbar is kept as short as practical because length reduces effectiveness. So yes, it needs somewhere to land. A panel that is completely full, or an obsolete panel with no available parts, means that gets addressed first — which is worth knowing before ordering anything.
They wear out, because the components that absorb energy degrade each time they act. A device that has taken a significant hit may be at the end of its life while looking untouched, which is why most have an indicator light or an audible signal to show they are still functional. That indicator is worth actually checking occasionally — a device that has quietly failed offers no protection at all, and nothing else tells you.
The moment power is restored is a real risk point, because re-energising a circuit that has been switched and re-switched upstream can put transients onto the service. That is squarely the case a panel-mounted device is positioned for. It is also a reason surge protection and backup power often get discussed together, since both are answers to the same weather.
Tell us what failed and what your panel looks like, and we will tell you what protection is practical and what it will not cover.