Imagine in a busy international airport like London, Heathrow. An online, real time business institution like Nigerian stock exchange, a major specialist hospital, oil production platform.
Downtime of seconds, minutes, hours and days as a result of lightning strikes and surges. Putting off the transactions with enormous consequences like confusion, embarrassment, loss of revenue, litigations, business confidence and even loss of life etc. Hence the need to protect.
Lightning wreaks havoc on electronic systems. These Systems have become indispensable to our very existence.
From ATM for banking, POS for shopping, telephone for communication, computers in offices, even fuel dispensers in the gas stations. Electronic systems have indeed taken over our lives.
Unfortunately, they are all sensitive systems, needing protection from the secondary effects of lightning also known as Surge or Transient overvoltage.
All modern electronic systems key in today’s business and are all vulnerable.
They include but not limited to:
- Computers
- Data connection networks
- Building management systems
- PABX & telephone exchanges
- CCTV ,Fire and Burglar alarms
- Telecom base stations
- Uninterrupted power supply (UPS’s)
- Programmable logic controllers (PLC’s)
- Plant sensor ASD’s, VFD’s, Motor controllers etc
- Telemetry and data acquisition equipment.
- Etc
The use and proper selection of quality surge protectors is now a major issue and defined by many standards including BSEN/IEC62305, BS 7671 and NFPA 780 etc
These standards give guidelines to:
- Characteristics of quality and effective protectors
- when and where to protect
- Choosing, Specifying and deployment of protectors
- Proper installation Methods etc
How are Surges generated?
Surges and transients are generated from many sources.
Apart from improper wiring, bad practices in earthing / grounding , accidents involving animals and men, trees on overhead lines etc.
The two main causes of surge are lightning and electrical switching events
They result from the secondary effects of lightning (either between clouds or to ground) from even a kilometre or more away.
Inducing lightning energy (which could be through resistive, inductive or capacitive coupling) to overhead or underground power, data and signal lines.
The electrical switching events of large inductive loads (such as motors, transformers and electrical drives) or capacitive loads (e.g power factor correction equipment) all contribute to the generation of surges in a power system.
HOW SYSTEMS ARE AFFECTED BY SURGES (TRANSIENTS)
Although surges are high magnitude voltages of brief duration They damage the electronic equipment.
Causing systems and components to:
- Disrupt operations through loss of data, software corruption and unexplained crashes.
- Degrade equipment components; shorten equipment life span and performance.
- Destroy components, circuit boards and I/O cards.
- All resulting in expensive and unnecessary D
Loss of these systems can cripple organisations leading to huge revenue and customer loss. And can even lead to business closing.
FullSpectrum Energy, we assist organizations in protecting critical infrastructure/assets in Oil & Gas, Telecoms, Utilities, aviation, marine, industries, power and indeed all sectors of the economy. Through installation of co-ordinated surge protection devices covering mains power, lines, data and signal, sensitive and critical electrical /electronic systems.
Contact us
Victor Oyedu, FNSE, FNIEEE, CPQ.
Power Quality and Energy Management Specialist.
Publisher at Afrienergyonline.com
CEO, FullSpectrum Energy Solutions Limited, Nigeria.
