electrical storms and pulling power to the system

[Bill Hart]

ok; you win.

my home has natural gas fed radiant floor heat and ovens/cooktops, so i really don't need huge KVa's since there are no fans or major uses for electricity. but i will admit i it's not wired to watch my Home Theatre in the house so i'm limited to my other flat screens for TV or movies. i use to have Direct TV but switched to Comcast a few years back so typically a power outage also means no internet or cable. i seem to cope well as i just read which i love to do anyway.

reading in front of a fire when it looks like this......

View attachment 4625

.....is very enjoyable.

and having a 35Kva generator means you are in a neighborhood beyond me for sure.

and btw, hi Bill!

I am not going to miss snow. Yikes!

 

[DonH50]

We have fairly frequent glitches, lightning strikes, and usually lose power for from a few hours (maybe 2-3 times/year) to several days (twice in about 15 years, both due to heavy snow taking down power poles and in one case substation towers). I do not normally pull plugs. Virtually all the electronics (computers, TVs, AVRs, all that jazz except the power amps and subs that have their own power amps) plug into the dozen or so APC UPS units of various types and ratings throughout the house. We also have whole-house transient/surge and lightning protection at the service (that is two different units). Nothing will stop the carnage from a direct strike, but we rode out a strike to a tree about 50' from the house with no issues (except some very scared folk inside, plus me who was getting ready to grill after the storm had passed when the bolt struck out of the clear blue!)

I would love to have a backup generator and really need to get one. I was all set to have the wiring done when we added a detached garage last summer, but it was going to take more time, effort, and money than I had at the time. The electrician said it would not be any more to do it later so we decided to wait. I was expecting about a day and maybe $1500; we don't have enough room left in our service for some of the rewiring so it was going to be a few days and more like $3k, plus a generator. And I couldn't quite decide how many circuits to transfer, how much a generator was needed, etc. I may buy a generator this fall just in case and use the poor man's transfer switch (pull the mains). I need to look again how big to get -- I had forgotten about the amp-sucking well pump so we probably need a 12 - 15 kW unit.

A friend of mine has a nice auto-switching/starting Kohler or Genrac unit (forget) but has not had to use it since he got it... He lives on the other side of the highway, close to town, and does not have anything like the power problems we have. I offered to take it off his hands, no charge to haul away, but no...

 

[GaryProtein]

I will power it all down including the computers but I don't unplug. I have had a few times where the power pop's off then on very quickly in less than a second and it plays havoc with everything. I am more concerned about that than an actual strike to my home simply because it has occured several times over the years.

As far as a direct strike if all that happens is it all gets burned up I would consider myself a very lucky person.

Rob

That happens all the time, especially during the summer. The blinking clock on the microwave gives evidence of this happening a couple of times a week during the summer. The power company sometimes pulses the power when the weather is very hot also creating havoc with electronics. Most components do not like being pulsed on and off five or ten times in fifteen seconds. That really disrupts their turn-on and turn-off circuitry programs.

Because of that, in the summer I turn everything off when I leave the house. In the other seasons, I usually leave everything on all the time because power interruption isn't a problem then.

If you get a direct strike on your house, all bets are off and you're just lucky if your house doesn't burn down.

 

[Bill Hart]

Gary, the only thing I normally leave on is the line stage, b/c turning it on and off stresses the power supply tubes and it sounds better after it has been running a while. (Interesting, too, the thing has a mechanical, not 'through system' hum when i power that unit up from a cold start and it take hours before it quiets down- nothing wrong with it, Vlad just went over it with a fine tooth comb).
To Mike, Amir, and others who have generators- I'd be remiss if I didn't ask: what does your system sound like if you are getting power from a source other than the 'grid'?
Final note: India. Yikes! I think I read something that said the area covered is the equivalent of the entire EU!

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Gary, the only thing I normally leave on is the line stage, b/c turning it on and off stresses the power supply tubes and it sounds better after it has been running a while. (Interesting, too, the thing has a mechanical, not 'through system' hum when i power that unit up from a cold start and it take hours before it quiets down- nothing wrong with it, Vlad just went over it with a fine tooth comb).

my stereo darTZeel amp goes into sleep mode without a signal for 2-3 minutes; i do shut off my darTZeel preamp which then goes into 'charging' mode if the batteries are not fully charged. i always turn off my turntable, tape decks and tape repro units. i turn off my digital every 3-4 days overnight. my room has HVAC and the temp is kept in a 7 degree range, so i never have any extreme temperature issues for the gear.

To Mike, Amir, and others who have generators- I'd be remiss if I didn't ask: what does your system sound like if you are getting power from a source other than the 'grid'?
Final note: India. Yikes! I think I read something that said the area covered is the equivalent of the entire EU!

my generator is not hooked up to my 2-channel room and Equi=tech. when i lose power i cannot listen.

 

[amirm]

Same here. I would have had to have a generator 3X he size if I powered everything. Right now it powers one entire floor including *electric* heat pump and a few things on the lower floor where my listening space is.

 

[Bill Hart]

Well, I'm home right now, everything back on, was enjoying some music, and then a huge dip in the power- sure, i see the effects of an AC compressor kicking on normally, because the lights will dim momentarily, but this threw everything into standby mode-it was like power to the entire system disconnected momentarily, although no breakers tripped, and everything resumed/power lights came back on in safe start mode (that's how the Lamm stuff works anyway, if you power it down, you have to wait a couple minutes for it to come on again). Kinda freaked me out, because that's never happened during a listening session in six plus years here. Power company said no scheduled work was being done on the line but acknowledged that, given the heat and humidity, we could be borderline in terms of 'brownout' conditions. I didn't measure the voltage at the wall, and suspect if I did now, after the fact, it would probably read fine. The utility person also said that there is line switching that occasionally occurs as a protective measure if a squirrel gets into the wrong place~ I'd hate to think of what happened to the squirrel, although I do like BBQ.
Maybe I just need my own power plant.