When lightning strikes, it's
exciting and exhilarating—but it's scary
too. It's scary because it's dangerous: leaping bolts of lightning
contain huge amounts of electrical energy
that are released in a
fraction of a second. If lightning strikes near your home, all that
electricity has to go somewhere. One
place it may go is through the
electrical wiring system in your home, damaging or destroying any
electrical items that are plugged in at the time. It's almost
impossible to stop lightning from damaging your things, and it's
generally best to unplug whatever you can well before a storm
arrives. Another helpful thing you can do is install surge
protectors. These cheap, compact cubes and power strips help to
even-out sudden peaks of electricity in the supply and reduce the
chances of damage to sensitive electronic equipment. Let's take a closer look at
how they work.
Photo: Electrical fire! Though the numbers vary from country to country, and from year to year, electrical failures or faults typically cause between a quarter and a half of all fires; surge protectors and fuses help to reduce the risk. Photo of a trainee fire-fighter putting out an electrical fire with a
carbon-dioxide extinguisher by William Kenny courtesy of US Navy and
Wikimedia Commons.
If you've read our long article on electricity,
you'll know that an electric current is a flow of electrons (tiny particles inside atoms) carrying energy through a
metal or another substance in a loop called a circuit. You'll also
know that electricity can be extremely dangerous: it's not something
to mess with if you value your life. The electricity that comes to
our homes from power plants travels at
incredibly high voltages because that helps to save energy. Transformers
in substations near to buildings turn the high voltage power into lower voltages that the
appliances in our homes can safely use. Different appliances need
larger or smaller amounts of electric power. Things that get hot
(electric showers, toasters, and
stoves) need large currents that supply a lot of power at once, whereas electronic equipment (CD players, televisions, and so on)
needs much smaller currents and uses less power. All these appliances assume that the electricity coming into
your home has a reasonably constant voltage.
But sometimes the voltage fluctuates because of sudden changes in the way power is supplied from the grid. Or it can happen
if someone in a nearby factory switches on or off a huge appliance with a powerful electric motor
inside it, which might cause a sudden surge or drop in power in the whole circuit in your home. A very
brief change in voltage is called a spike. A longer-lasting change is called a surge. A spike or surge probably won't affect other big appliances, but it could harm tiny components in sensitive electronic equipment. What we need is something that smooths out any peaks in the voltage—and that's what surge protectors do.
Photos: 1) A typical UK surge protector built into a cube. This one is made by Belkin, which is probably the best-known brand; other popular makes include APC, Ativa, and Hubbell. Note the indicator lights
on the top, both of which need to be lit up to confirm that the protector is working. The one
on the left glows green to show that the appliance is protected. The one on the right
(marked either 'Earthed' or 'Power') confirms that the power is switched on. 2) Another shot of the Belkin surge protector in its retail packaging.
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How surge protectors work
The appliances you use draw their power from sockets in the wall.
The power from the sockets feeds straight into the appliance down a
length of cable. In a surge protector, the main power line (known as
the hot wire or live wire)
has an extra connection (a
kind of "side road") linked to it that feeds to the ground
wire (sometimes also called the Earth wire;
the protective
wire in an electric circuit that sends any unwanted current safely
into the earth). Normally, the surge connection is inactive. However,
if a larger than normal voltage appears, and produces too much
electric current, the excess current is diverted safely down the side
road to ground. That means no more current than normal flows into
your appliance, so it's better protected from harm.
How does the surge connection know when to divert the current? It is
actually
a device called a varistor (voltage-dependent
resistor), made from a substance called a metal-oxide
semiconductor,
which is usually a bad
conductor (carrier) of electricity. When an excessive voltage
appears, the semiconductor in the varistor becomes a good conductor and
starts to carry electricity normally. For as long as the surge
voltage lasts, the semiconductor channels harmful current to ground.
Once things return to normal, the semiconductor switches back again.
All this means your appliance is not only protected during a
surge—it should keep on working normally.
Artwork: Left artwork: Without a surge protector, the
hot/live (brown) and neutral (blue) connections provide power to your
appliance. The ground (green) connection is typically wired to the
metal case to provide a safe way for stray currents to escape, but it's
not involved in powering the appliance. Right artwork: With a surge protector, there is an
extra connection from the hot/live wire to the ground. If a surge
current flows in down the hot/live wire, any excess current is safely
diverted round the surge wire (red) to the ground/earth. NB: This
example features typical UK wiring.
Why surge protectors don't give you total protection
It's important to note that surge protectors don't give you complete
protection.
A direct lightning strike is an absolutely massive discharge of
electricity; a surge protector probably won't stop such a huge surge
from damaging things in your home.
Surge protectors are also of limited value when surges last some time
and they don't protect against higher than expected currents from the
power grid.
What are fuses?
When a fuse goes, you can often hear it blowing out with a sharp
CRACK! that plunges your home into sudden darkness. It's a real nuisance when this happens late at night—but the alternative is much
worse. If we didn't have fuses, electrical faults could start fires
in our homes and burn them to the ground. Thank heavens, then, for
these tiny electric protectors that keep us safe. Let's find out what
they are and how they work!
Photo: The fuse inside an electrical plug (wired for the UK electricity system).
The fuse is the brown vertical cylinder on the right. It sits in series between the brown (live) wire
and the power supply: in other words, the current from the supply has to go through the fuse to get down the brown wire.
This particular fuse is rated at 13 amps, which is the largest possible current any appliance like this should take.
It's more common for small appliances to use 3 amp or 5 amp fuses.
Why do we need fuses?
For a whole variety of unpredictable reasons, the cables running into electrical appliances can suddenly find themselves
carrying much more current than they should. If we didn't have fuses, those high currents could damage our
televisions, radios, computers,
and light bulbs, possibly causing fires, and maybe even putting lives at risk. Fuse protect electrical appliances
by blocking currents that are bigger than they should be.
How fuses work
Photo: Inside a fuse. If you break open a cartridge fuse, this is what you'll find: a thin conducting wire in the middle, to carry the current, surrounded by quite a thick, insulating, ceramic casing. The ceramic is designed to protect the plug (or
other equipment inside which the fuse is fitted) from heat and fire when a high current flows.
You probably know that wires get hot when electricity travels
through them. That's how ordinary, incandescent lamps work. Electricity flows through a very thin wire called a filament making
it so hot that it gives off light. The same idea is at work in an
electric toaster. Here, electricity
flows through a series of thin
metal ribbons, making them so hot that they produce enough heat to
cook bread. A fuse is exactly the same. It's a thin piece of wire
designed to carry a limited electrical current. If you try to pass a
higher current through the wire, it'll heat up so much that it burns
or melts. When it melts, it breaks the circuit it's fitted to and
stops the current flowing.
We fit fuses in different places in our homes. In some countries,
such as the UK, fuses are fitted into plugs on every appliance that
connects to an electrical outlet. Different appliances draw different
amounts of current, so an electric toaster will need a higher fuse
(typically 13 amp) than an electric light (usually just 3 amp).
Types of fuseboxes
Photo: An old-fashioned fusebox. This one has four fuses inside four brown Bakelite
fuse holders, each fuse protecting a separate circuit inside a house. If one fuse blows, the other three should remain unaffected.
The entire supply can be switched on and off with the little red switch on the right. That switches all four circuits
on or off at the same time.
There are also fuses fitted at the junction where the main
electricity supply flows into your home. This is called the junction
box, fusebox,
or sometimes (more vaguely) the consumer unit.
It divides the incoming electricity into a number of
separate circuits and feeds them to different parts of your home. A
high-power circuit feeds large items like electric cookers, while
lower-rated circuits feed lights and other appliances. Having
different parts of your home on separate circuits means that a
failure in one circuit doesn't stop the others from working.
Typically each circuit in your home is fitted with its own fuse.
In older fuseboxes, the fuse is just a bare piece of wire connected
between two terminals. More recent fuseboxes have replaceable
cartridge fuses with the fuse wire built into a glass or ceramic cylinder that
you can easily snap in and out. The latest fuseboxes do away with
fuses altogether and have trip switches instead. If a fault occurs,
the fusebox detects the problem instantly and the trip switch
automatically switches off whichever circuits are affected. Once
you've identified and solved the problem, you can simply flip the
switch back to get the power working again.
Photo: A modern fusebox like this one, made by Wylex, uses trip-switches instead
of fuse wire or cartridges. The first photo shows the entire fusebox; the second one shows a close-up
of the trip switches. If there's too much current flowing in one of the circuits, the switch for that
circuit flips over and cuts off the electricity. You can restore the power by flipping the switch back again (after
correcting whatever caused the problem). Half the circuits in this fusebox are fitted with automatic
RCD (residual-current device) protection, which greatly reduce the risk of electric shocks when you accidentally cut through power cables.
Which fuse should you use?
Photo: Two glass cylinder fuses, rated at 30 amps, from a household fusebox. You
never need fuses this big in single, household appliances.
If you have to replace a fuse, it's generally fine to replace the one you take out with
another one of the same rating (13 amp with 13 amp, 3 amp with 3 amp, or 5 amp with 5 amp). But it's
always a good idea to check: most appliances (or their instruction books) will tell you what fuse you
need. You can sometimes work by instinct: large appliances that heat things, such as electric
kettles or electric fires, will draw high currents and need large fuses; small appliances that
use smaller currents, such as table lamps or cellphone chargers, will only need small fuses. If
you put a small fuse in an appliance that draws a large current the fuse will blow quite quickly
and stop your appliance working; if you put a large fuse in an appliance that draws a small
current, you're stopping the fuse from working and putting yourself at risk.
You can also calculate the fuse you need from the power rating of your appliance and the voltage
of your supply, because power, voltage, and current are related by a simple equation: power (watts) =
voltage (volts) × current (amps). So to find the fuse rating (which must be higher than the current
the appliance draws), simply divide the power rating of your appliance by the voltage. For example, if you live in the UK
and you have a 2500 watt electric kettle and a 240 volt supply, you can see that your kettle will
use a current of 2500 divided by 240 or approximately 10.5 amps, so you need a 13 amp fuse. If
you have a table lamp with an old-fashioned 60 watt light bulb, it will use 60/240 = 0.25 amps, so
a 3 amp fuse is what you need. Here's a summary of how it works for 240 volt supplies:
Fuse rating
Power rating (for 240 volt supply)
3 amp
Up to 720 watts.
5 amp
720–1200 watts
13 amp
Over 1200 watts
If in doubt, always use the smallest fuse; the worst that will happen
is that the fuse will blow if the current is too high. If you use a fuse that's too big, it won't
protect your appliance from excessive currents and you may put yourself, your home, and your life
at risk.
Photo: A 3-amp use designed for UK plugs.
What's the difference between a surge protector and a fuse?
A fuse is designed to stop sudden large electric currents from damaging the
equipment in your house. Sounds the same as a surge protector,
doesn't it? But it actually works a different way. Most fuses are
very thin pieces of wire designed to allow only so much current
through them. The thicker the wire, the more current can flow; so fuses
rated for higher currents usually have thicker pieces of wire inside
them.
How does a fuse work? If there's too much current (for example, if
you've put too many appliances together on one socket), the fuse literally burns
out: the wire gets so hot that it melts and interrupts the circuit to
protect you. Occasionally, fuses actually "blow": the current
flowing through them is so great that they burn out instantly
with a loud cracking noise. A fuse, then, is a very drastic form of
protection: if anything happens, it shuts off the electricity
completely. A surge protector is designed to smooth out smaller
fluctuations in voltage and it doesn't normally shut down the circuit
when a problem occurs. You need both fuses and surge protectors for good
protection from electrical problems. Indeed, if you look round the back of
a typical surge protector, you'll very likely find.... a replaceable fuse!
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Don't want to read our articles? Try listening instead
Take Your Surge Protector for a Spin by Gregory Schmidt, The New York Times, January 30, 2013. A brief review of 360 Electrical's angled bank of protectors.
Books
Electrical Safety Handbook by Dennis K. Neitzel, Al Winfield, Mary Capelli-Schellpfeffer. McGraw-Hill, 2019.
There are many patents covering surge protection devices; this is just a selection to start you off:
US Patent 7,233,086: Power line conditioner by Scott M. Borden et al, Belkin International, Inc., June 19, 2007. A sophisticated modern power filter with built-in surge protection.
US Patent 5,621,602: Surge protector by Bernd D. Winkelmann, International Resistive Company, Inc., April 15, 1997. A resistor-based surge protector for telecommunications cables.
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Woodford, Chris. (2007/2018) Surge protectors and fuses. Retrieved from https://www.explainthatstuff.com/surgeprotectors.html. [Accessed (Insert date here)]
Bibtex
@misc{woodford_2FA,
author = "Woodford, Chris",
title = " Surge protectors and fuses",
publisher = "Explain that Stuff",
year = "2007",
url = "https://www.explainthatstuff.com/surgeprotectors.html",
urldate = "2023-07-28"
}
