[Bob S]

For whole house surge protection you really have several options. I have researched them all as follows:
1. The $299 SECO installation is the best available. You get a high quality surge protector at the meter and several plug in devices for your sensitive electronics. This will provide very good protection against a power surge but little or no protection against a direct lightning strike.
2. A whole house surge protector at your electric panel. This is a double breaker installed right into your panel by an electrical contractor. Cost about $150. This is good protection but not quite as good a device as that provided by SECO. You should still use individual outlet surge protectors for all of your sensitive appliances.
3. Same as #2, but do it yourself. You can buy the double breaker device for about $75 to $100 retail. I found one on E-Bay for under $50. You just snap in the double breaker and connect one wire to the ground bar.
4. A combination of both #1 and #2 or #3. This really provides great protection. I plan on doing this eventually but will stick to #3 for now. Any surge protector tries to dissipate any surge that it sees, but some surge can leak through. That is the reason for several devices in series.

I hope that this helps.