[jrref]

A while back there were discussions about the surge protector you can buy or rent from your electric utility company that get's installed on your electric meter. It's marketed as a "meter-based surge arrester is designed to prevent unnecessary financial loss, as it protects large appliances (motors and compressors) by reducing surges at the meter BEFORE they enter the home." as per one utilities web site. But when you read the warranty it specifically states it doesn't cover any devices that have an electronic chip which is pretty much everything these days. When you look at the device's internal components, it's designed to block very large surges coming from your power line feed to your home, although it appears to be necessary protection since you never know when you may get hit with a large power surge from the power utility.

The following poll is focused on the effectiveness of Type-1 meter surge arrester and Type-2 whole house surge protector installed at the circuit breaker panel.

The poll assumes everyone has some sort of Type-3 "Point-of-Use" surge protectors such as a power strips, surge cubes, UPS, or any other exotic Type-3 protector at their TVs and computers and other sensitive electronic equipment.

The poll also is not about the number of Villagers who don't have any surge protection or don't believe in surge protection since that's another topic of discussion.

The focus of this post is not to discuss the merits of having or not having surge protection here in the Villages but to get some information on actual experiences Villagers have had with surge protection over the past couple of years living here in the Villages with power surges.

So all that said, for those living in the Villages, did you have damage from a power surge with the following?

1) Only had the electric meter surge arrester device and still had damage from any power surge.
2) Only had a whole house surge protector installed at the circuit breaker panel such as the Eaton Ultra or the PSP Vortex and still had damage from any power surge.
3) Had both the electric meter surge arrester AND the whole house surge protector installed at the circuit breaker panel and still had damage from any power surge.
4) Had both the electric meter surge arrester AND the whole house surge protector installed at the circuit breaker panel and Did Not have any damage from any power surge.
5) Had the electric meter surge arrester and Did Not have any damage from any power surge.
6) Had the whole house surge protector installed at the circuit breaker panel and Did Not have any damage from any power surge.