How reliable is your mains power supply?

[Linchpin]

I connect my miggy through a belkin spike protecter, its one with a £10000 guarentee i think.. not sure of the amount.

My Pee Cee however,

well i just plug that into the mains hahah

Kev

[mikeymike]

The problem with guarantees is that the manufacturers will try (and probably succeed) to find a loophole which means your disaster isn't covered by the guarantee.

@ KennyR

I think the basic principle applies - go for the brands you consider trustworthy, and then the more you spend, the better protection you get.  There are few (if any) systems that will guarantee that your computer won't get fried by a bolt of lightning :-)

[Tomas]

Here it is usually mane years between power losses... But late 2002/early 2003 we had few 5min blackouts due to some problem at the powerstation.
I got hardware damaged once... There was a big thunderstorm last year, when some lightning hit right outside our house, i lost one hub, my dads compaq, one monitor and had some damage to my tv... Luckily both my desktop pc and my server survived, they only rebooted...
I have not ups or some kind of protection at all.  :-(

From then on, i allways unplug my equipment when there is a thunderstorm, have had to do it 4 times this week :O

And yeah most lines are buried under ground..

One problem here in norway though, there is no grounded contacts other than in bathroom, washingroom, kitchen and such  :-x  So i have to run all my pc equipment without grounding... dunno how safe that is though...  Any ideas?

[danamania]

Except for the storm season it's usually pretty good. Nice & steady, no brownouts or blackouts. When we hit late summer/autumn (February to April) then the problems pop up. I could usually expect around 10 complete blackouts in that time, anywhere from a few minutes to 4 hours. I've never lost hardware because of power problems, except for a modem with a relay burned from a lightning strike.

It still worked OK, but needed a phone connected to manually dial

[Jose]

Here in Portugal it sucks completely. I've already lost too  HD 's because of that. Had to buy a protected UPS. :-x

[KennyR]

Tomas wrote:

One problem here in norway though, there is no grounded contacts other than in bathroom, washingroom, kitchen and such So i have to run all my pc equipment without grounding... dunno how safe that is though... Any ideas?

That's bad. In the UK we have a three-pin plug that's always earthed. I think the rest of the planet should use this plug. It's much, much better than the two-pin one everyone else seems to use. And it doesn't come out of the wall if you trip over the wire either! ;-)

[Tomas]

thats what i thought...  :-(
Seems like its only the scandinavian countries which do not have earthed electrical connections this days as a standard...

Not a single pc here in this house is hooked up to a connection that is earthed..

[QuikSanz]

A quik reminder to all who live in lightning prone areas. Most surge suppresion on devices constist of some MOV's. These devices are "ONE SHOT", once hit, it's done. Please replace all MOV's when in question. You can save much heartache. I work as tech support for a company that makes automation machines that are located sometimes more than a quarter mile from the building. You wouldn't belive the damage done.

Chris

PS: If there are none in your power supply, ADD THEM.

[Dan]

From then on, i always unplug my equipment when there is a thunderstorm, have had to do it 4 times this week :O

It´s the same for me here in Skåne (south Sweden).
No problems except the thunderstorms. The electrical line got better since they modernized it, ne poles, new isolated wire and better grounding for lightning protection but we still got lightingspikes sometimes.
The worst thing is the phone, lightning always hit through the phoneline here even though thtey digged it down.

[Hammer]

@KennyR

My house’s power grid is connected with some sort of “safety switch”. Most of my electronic gear is Earth'ed. Local district’s main power lines were placed under ground.

[Casper]

Seems like its only the scandinavian countries which do not have earthed electrical connections this days as a standard...

Same for me here in Sweden, none of my computers are earthed. All newer buildings here in Sweden have all sockets earthed since it is a requirement now when building houses. My apartment building was built in the late sixties though so I also only have earthed sockets in the kitchen.

[PaSha]

@Tomas:
All newer buildings in Norway (built after july 1999 IIRC) are required to have the entire electrical installation done with grounded sockets (and of course ditto cables). AFAIK this is a EU requirement, and goes for the entire EU as well.

Btw, if you don't like the fact that your power sockets aren't grounded then fix it. If you have an open installation (cables on the wall) then the ground wire is most likely present, and most likely connected to ground in the fusebox. Note that absolutely all sockets in the same room must be of the same type (as in grounded or non-grounded), mixing is not allowed.

Another thing about the norwegian electrical system:
Most buildings built before ca 1995 have a 230 V IT-system (which means that there's 230 V between two live phases), that allows upto 50 V in the ground wire before the fuse pops..... Might be just as well that your computers aren't grounded :/ This is the reason for why norway is plagued by fires caused by failure in the electrical system.
Get yourself a "jordfeilbryter" (ground failure cutoff switch ?).

Newer buildings (inparticular business/industrial buildings) have a more civilized 400 V TN-system (400 V between two live phases, and 230 V between a live phase and neutral). This system allows absolutely no voltage to be on the ground wire, the fuse pops immediately, hence it is much, much safer. This system is the most common throughout Europe. Note that Norway uses 400/230 V as opposed to the more common 380/220 V.

@KennyR:
Most of Europe, except Britain, is now Using socalled 'Shuko' connectors. (older installations may have various weird connectors, though. The French have one with the ground pin sticking out from the wall socket) They have two round pins and two prongs that connect to the side of the plug to provide grounding. And they sit quite firmly in their sockets.

Anyhow, techie stuff aside, we rarely have power outages, maybe once or twice a year. I've never had any of my stuff getting fried, a neighbor got his modem killed by lightning once, but that's it. I happily use my computers and watch TV during thunderstorms, because all the cables are in the ground.

-Paul

[odin]

In my country the power supply is very reliable (although there are fears for chaos, because the power market will be 'liberalized' in the near future). I can't remember when we had a power cut for the last time.

The only problem in the installation in our student house. The 'earthing' fail safe switch sometimes switches off and we don't have a clue what's causing it. But then again the previous owners made a mess of the wiring in here. In the kitchen sink closet there actually were live wires with the insulation worn away  :-o.

I don't use any type of surge protection or UPS. My parents had a fax machine blown out once when lighting hit the phone line (underground). Other than that no power problems whatsoever there either.

[that_punk_guy]

Supply in my area tends to be pretty good. (Edit: by that I mean I haven't had a problem... yet...) As for protection... well, I do have a "surge protected" 6-way adapter from B&Q. God knows if it's of any use, but at the time it was cheap as the non-"surge protected" ones, so I went with it  :-D