Surge Guard

For as lit­tle as $5.95 a month, you can pro­tect your motor-dri­ven appli­ances – wash­ing machine, refrig­er­a­tor – from harm­ful surges.  Sign up today! Review our Surge Guard™ Ser­vice Agree­ment and War­ran­ty.

Whole house surge arrestors, installed at the meter base, are the crit­i­cal first line of defense against dam­ag­ing light­ning and pow­er surges enter­ing your home through the elec­tric meter.

As impor­tant as they are, how­ev­er, whole-house surge pro­tec­tors do not clamp volt­age to a lev­el low enough to pro­tect micro­proces­sor-oper­at­ed equip­ment, such as com­put­ers, which need high-qual­i­ty plug-in surge pro­tec­tors.

What caus­es pow­er line surges, and how do they dam­age my equip­ment?

Light­ning is the most dra­mat­ic and destruc­tive cause of pow­er line prob­lems. How­ev­er, downed util­i­ty poles, squir­rels, birds, snakes, or even large motors switch­ing on and off can cre­ate pow­er surges.

Dam­age occurs when too much ener­gy goes through a sen­si­tive cir­cuit, caus­ing a break­down in the insu­la­tion. This can hap­pen instant­ly from a high-ener­gy surge or, over time, from sev­er­al low-ener­gy surges. Surge pro­tec­tion prod­ucts reduce the risk of pre­ma­ture equip­ment fail­ure caused by cir­cuit break­down.

Can a surge harm my equip­ment if I am not using it?

Yes. Many elec­tri­cal devices have elec­tron­ic timers, clocks, or remote con­trols that remain in oper­a­tion even when it is not in use. Also, some appli­ances cycle off and on at ran­dom, and they could be on dur­ing a surge.

Why do I need surge pro­tec­tion?

Elec­tron­ics have become increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed and, as a result, more sen­si­tive. Even slight pow­er surges can short­en the lifes­pan of DVRs, game con­soles, and com­put­ers. And now, even refrig­er­a­tors, stoves, and dish­wash­ers are full of sen­si­tive micro­proces­sor cir­cuit­ry that makes them as vul­ner­a­ble to surge dam­age as home com­put­ers and LED tele­vi­sions.

Most peo­ple have insur­ance to cov­er replac­ing dam­aged appli­ances, but there is no com­pen­sa­tion for the incon­ve­nience of replac­ing these appli­ances, such as a refrig­er­a­tor or its con­tents. Surge pro­tec­tion is an invest­ment that reduces the risk of such unpleas­ant expe­ri­ences. The cost can be recov­ered by pro­tect­ing against just one cat­a­stroph­ic impulse that might destroy or dam­age appli­ances in a mod­ern home.

Won’t my cir­cuit break­ers pro­tect my equip­ment?

No. The reac­tion time of the cir­cuit break­ers in your elec­tri­cal ser­vice pan­el is much too slow. Our Meter-Treater® acts with­in nano-sec­onds, a near­ly immea­sur­able amount of time. Cir­cuit break­ers are designed to pro­tect the wiring in your home from over­cur­rent. It is the over­volt­age that is blocked by the surge pro­tec­tor.

Will these devices pre­vent my dig­i­tal clocks from blink­ing after an out­age?

No. Surge pro­tec­tion devices are designed to “stand by,” wait­ing to block any unusu­al­ly high volt­age. They do not pro­vide unin­ter­rupt­ible pow­er. If a light­ning strike some­where down­line caus­es a cir­cuit break­er on the dis­tri­b­u­tion line to trip momen­tar­i­ly, you will see your lights blink off for a moment while the cir­cuit break­er resets. The surge pro­tec­tor will have pro­tect­ed your appli­ances from any pos­si­ble volt­age surge but not from the brief inter­rup­tion of pow­er.

Only an unin­ter­rupt­ible pow­er sup­ply (UPS) can step in to main­tain the volt­age dur­ing a “blink” or a brief out­age. A UPS back­up pow­er sup­ply is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed for your home com­put­er, your satel­lite receiv­er, and your DVR. Afford­able mod­els are avail­able at office sup­ply stores and online retail­ers. They are sold based on the load, or com­bined wattage, of the appli­ances they will pow­er. Small­er mod­els may pro­vide unin­ter­rupt­ed pow­er for just a few short min­utes. More expen­sive units, with greater bat­tery capac­i­ty, can pow­er appli­ances longer. These units also have built-in surge pro­tec­tion.

What does a surge arrestor do?

A surge arrestor acts like a trap­door to divert excess elec­tri­cal ener­gy (some­times called over­volt­ages, tran­sients, or surges). Unwant­ed bursts of elec­tric­i­ty are divert­ed to the trap­door because it is a low-imped­ance path to the ground. The trap­door is a met­al oxide varis­tor (MOV) that auto­mat­i­cal­ly acti­vates when the volt­age exceeds a cer­tain lev­el, safe­ly divert­ing most of the excess ener­gy to the ground.

When the over-volt­age or tran­sient is over, the MOV auto­mat­i­cal­ly resets and is ready for the next one. It is impor­tant to note that with light­ning or oth­er fast-act­ing impuls­es, the lead­ing edge of the impulse will pass the first MOV, even as the major­i­ty of the surge is rac­ing to, and through, the trap­door, hence the need for a sec­ond stage Point-of-Use arrestor inside the home or busi­ness.

Where does it install? How long does it take?

Meter-base devices go between the elec­tric meter and the meter box on the out­side of the house, and it takes only ten min­utes to install. A trained Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tive will install the unit free of charge.

Will this pro­tect me from all kinds of pow­er dis­tur­bances?

No, though they do han­dle the most fre­quent and destruc­tive ones. Very few peo­ple with both the Meter-Treater® and a sec­ond-stage inter­nal plug-in arrestor have suf­fered dam­age.

How­ev­er, there are many vari­a­tions of pow­er dis­tur­bances, and we can’t han­dle all of them with just surge arrest­ing, even with sec­ond-stage arrestors with fil­ters used inside. More sophis­ti­cat­ed tech­nolo­gies, i.e. hybrid pow­er con­di­tion­ers or true online dual con­ver­sion unin­ter­rupt­able pow­er sys­tems, are avail­able to han­dle com­plex pow­er prob­lems.

Will Surge Guard also pro­tect against Tem­po­rary Over Volt­ages (TOVs)?

Meter-Treaters have been doc­u­ment­ed by some util­i­ties to have helped pre­vent dam­age to sys­tems from util­i­ty TOV’s.

How­ev­er, the units are not specif­i­cal­ly designed for that pur­pose. Rather, they are designed for elec­tri­cal tran­sients, such as are asso­ci­at­ed with light­ning, elec­tri­cal grid switch­ing, motors start­ing and stop­ping, fur­nace ignit­ers, etc.

Faced with a TOV, Meter-Treaters will act just as if a large tran­sient is occur­ring and clamp on it (divert­ing it to ground), but at a cer­tain point, the coor­di­nat­ed safe­ty fus­ing will take effect, and the Meter-Treater will take itself out of the loop.

Will Surge Guard pro­tect me from a direct light­ning strike?

No. Noth­ing is a com­plete guar­an­tee from a direct light­ning strike. No prod­uct on the mar­ket can effec­tive­ly han­dle such a high lev­el of ener­gy.

What hap­pens if Surge Guard fails?

MOVs self-sac­ri­fice in a “dead short” mode. When this hap­pens on a Meter-Treater®, the MOV rup­tures and goes offline. The Meter-Treater® will not cut off pow­er to your house. Only the MOV surge cir­cuit becomes inac­tive.

I have a ground rod out­side at my meter. Won’t that help?

Prop­er ground­ing is impor­tant in all phas­es of pow­er trans­mis­sion and dis­tri­b­u­tion. Typ­i­cal­ly, the final ground­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive is the ground­ing bond at the dis­tri­b­u­tion trans­former.

The home­own­er is respon­si­ble for his meter sock­et ground rod, and it is nor­mal­ly inspect­ed and reg­u­lat­ed by build­ing code inspec­tors.

Dur­ing a surge, Meter-Treater® reduces the surge volt­age across any pow­er leg with ref­er­ence to ground and neu­tral. Dam­age to appli­ances typ­i­cal­ly occurs when the surge volt­age on the hot or neu­tral leg exceeds some inter­nal BIL (Basic Insu­la­tion Lev­el). The MOVs in Meter-Treater® are placed between each hot leg and the neutral/ground bond point. Con­duc­tion of the surge cur­rent is through each MOV thus plac­ing, in par­al­lel with the appli­ances, a desir­able path for the surge cur­rent.

A good ground is impor­tant for the reg­u­la­tion of volt­age, surge path and mem­ber safe­ty. Meter-Treater® installers test the mem­ber’s ground before instal­la­tion.

If the test results are some­what less than 100 ohms, no addi­tion­al ground rods are dri­ven. If greater than 100 ohms, the Meter-Treater® installer will dri­ve up to two addi­tion­al rods. Sel­dom is a mem­bers ground any low­er than 25 ohms (low is bet­ter), where­as Coastal Elec­tric Cooperative’s sys­tem ground is often as low as 5 ohms at the sub­sta­tion and not over 25 ohms down­line — depend­ing upon soil and oth­er con­di­tions.

Where does Coastal Elec­tric buy its whole-house surge arrestors?

Meter-Treater®, Inc., the orig­i­na­tor and inven­tor of the meter-based surge arrestor.

Since 1986, Meter-Treater® has been work­ing close­ly with elec­tric util­i­ty com­pa­nies through­out the coun­try. Meter-Treater® is the pio­neer in the field of whole-house surge pro­tec­tors and cur­rent­ly holds sev­er­al patents in meter base surge pro­tec­tion with many more pend­ing.

Meter-Treater® whole-house surge pro­tec­tors were first intro­duced and placed into ser­vice in ear­ly 1987. Many enhance­ments have evolved through con­tin­u­al test­ing both in-house and in the field.

The heart of almost all mod­ern surge pro­tec­tion devices on the mar­ket today is the Met­al Oxide Varis­tors (MOV). Meter-Treater®, unlike oth­ers, uses the larg­er, more durable 40mm varis­tors because of their supe­ri­or reli­a­bil­i­ty and safe­ty. The disks are “dis­tri­b­u­tion grade” and nor­mal­ly used only in more expen­sive com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions.

Because of Meter-Treater’s unique designs, the unit is capa­ble of safe­ly reach­ing ser­vice lim­its well beyond oth­er prod­ucts. Meter-Treater® has been repeat­ed­ly test­ed to 57,000 amps and has been test­ed by sev­er­al major pow­er com­pa­nies.

The unit safe­ly dis­en­gages due to the unique patent­ed fus­es, and it does this with­out inter­rupt­ing mem­ber’s ser­vice. The Meter-Treater® has repeat­ed­ly passed crit­i­cal end-of-life test­ing with­out catch­ing fire.

Of all the prod­ucts we’ve seen, the Meter-Treater® ranks, in our opin­ion, as a must-have for any­one.

It sim­ply pro­vides too much pro­tec­tion, for too lit­tle cost, to not have.