I bless the rains down in Africa…
Summer up on the highveld is the beginning of the rainy season and that means that wifi equipment and other home appliances are going to be assaulted by nature at its most awesome. In South Africa, lightning damage results in around R500 million in insurance claims each year. And although our summer storms are spectacular, it can result in major frustration if you are unlucky enough to lose equipment to lightning surge.
The first thing to bear in mind is that lightning will always want to travel to ground using the shortest possible route. This means if your TV or wifi router is along that route, lightning will destroy it and everything in its path. It is also very sneaky and chaotic and will exploit any weakness in your electrical system.
There are three common ways that lightning strikes can damage equipment in your home. The first is when the municipal power lines close to your house get struck by lightning. This is by far the most common cause of damage and the easiest to safeguard against. Municipal lines offer some degree of protection but on many occasions the surge will reach your house and follow any electrically connected cable, including network and USB cables, damaging equipment along the way.
This means that your strategy to protect against lightning damage would be to install lightning protection for each device that is wired into your network as well as other valuable appliances such as TVs and fridges etc. However, if you have one device connected to your network via an Ethernet cable without surge protection, you can be sure the lightning will find it, often damaging the other connected devices even if they are protected at the wall.
The simplest solution is to fit multiplugs (labelled as ”high surge” or lightning protection) at each powerpoint that have devices you wish to protect (do not buy standard or medium surge). Brands to consider are Clearline and Ellies. A less intrusive solution is to fit surge protectors to your electrical distribution board but these need to be installed by a certified electrician. They provide protection across your entire electrical network which could work out cheaper and certainly neater than buying multiplugs for each wall plug. These solutions are not mutually exclusive and some feel that the surge multiplug offers better protection. Companies such as Powerhouse Distributions (PHD) and Clearline offer various solutions for home and businesses.
The next most common source of surge damage is from a lightning strike close to the house. Here the strike causes a massive electromagnetic pulse that can induce an electrical current in wires and electrical conductors. This surge will then damage connected devices and in rare cases even in electronics systems that are disconnected from the mains. The only protection here is to ensure that you have good earth on your main electrical system and the connected devices have surge protection.
The third less common cause is a direct strike to the house or an outdoor electrical system. An average lightning bolt has around 45 thousand amps and a temperature of around 50 thousand degrees celsius. Here the power is way too much for anything but industrial grade protection. Considering the lightning has just travelled five or ten kilometres, across open air to your house, it is not going to be stopped by a simple surge protector.
If you stay in an older house, or are worried about the state of your electrical system, get an electrician to check the quality of the earth. Without this, no surge protection will work correctly.
Useful links:
- Clearline online store: https://surgeprotection.co.za/
- Ellis online shop: https://ellies.co.za/home-electrical/