On Thu, 09 Feb 2017 14:53:02 -0000, westom wrote:

On Wednesday, February 8, 2017 at 5:18:18 PM UTC-5, James Wilkinson Sword wrote:
I can't believe it's that likely for 4800V to get onto a 240V line. Possible, but so rare it's not worth bothering to install protection. I protect against little spikes, or voltages about 30V under/over what they should be.

30 volts and higher is already solved inside each appliance. Why would anyone spend money to protect from something that does not even cause damage? That is already made irrelevant by what already must exist inside every appliance?

Might do in quality appliances, but not cheap ones, or LED lightbulbs.

A 33,000 volt wire fell upon the local distribution. Even electric meters were blown 30 feet from their pans. Many suffered appliance damage and destroyed protectors. At least one suffered damaged circuit breakers.

I'm glad our HV lines aren't hung up in the air!

My friend knows someone who knows this stuff. So he had a 'whole house' protector. His electric meter was also damaged. But nothing else. Even the 'whole house' protector was not damaged. In part, because it was properly earthed.

Transients created by lightning, linemen errors, tree rodents, stray cars, and insulator failures are rare. So we properly earth a 'whole house' solution for about $1 per protected appliance. Then such threats do not cause hardware damage - even to that 'whole house' protector.

--
A man comes out of a shopping mall to find that the side of his parked car is rammed in.
Seeing a note under the windshield, he read it.
On the paper is written: "As I'm writing this, about a dozen people are watching me. They think I'm giving you my name, phone number, and insurance company. But I'm not."