Our buddy Phill composed, in an unusually non-berating way today thusly :

"Large electros kill spikes just like sledgehammers kill flies. "

And they got better aim. As long as you have full wave rectification, and
the rectifiers can handle alot of peak current, they are quite effective.
However they are not effective so much against having simple overvoltage
applied.

You are not in the US, if the power there is like the UK or whatever it is
different. While you have 240 coming in referenced to neutral, in the US it
is half that. The line is balanced with two 120 volt legs out of phase.
Almost all smaller appliiances run from one leg to neutral. If the neutral
loses continuity it can apply as much as double the effective, peak to peak,
RMS and whatever other way you want to measure it - voltage to your
appliance.


** The 120V leg with the greater load will drop voltage when the neutral is
lost - so the other leg goes up until something goes bang.

This cannot happen in the good countries but I am not here to bitch.

** It happens now and then in live entertainment venues when 3 phase power
is used.

Same reason, no neutral exists or loss of the of neutral conductor.


..... Phil