Rob Malpass <lug@???> wrote:
> Does anyone know of a cost effective solution to
> a "dirty" electricity supply? My
> father-in-law's PC (built by my own fair hand
> admittedly!) is having all sorts of hardware
> issues and I don't think it's my workmanship - I
> think it's the electricity supply at his house.
As Tony and Tim have suggested, a UPS may help. I
suspect it would have to be an on-line device,
though, where the equipment is always fed from the
battery. An off-line UPS may not provide
sufficient protection against voltage spikes.
> I'm thinking that a standard surge protector
> isn't good enough
Power electronics isn't my area, but I have read
that few retail surge protectors are able to
absorb enough energy to be useful.
> it's not power outages that are the problem - I
> suspect it's blowing components because (if we
> were to test the AC at his house on an
> oscilloscope) we wouldn't get a nice sine wave.
A good switched-mode PSU should be able to run off
nearly anything - triangle, square, sawtooth [1].
Some will even run off DC. It's voltage spikes
beyond the designed maximum that will cause
problems.
However, I wonder if protection is the wrong first
step. I'd suggest calling in a competent
electrician to inspect and test the house wiring.
It's also possible that there's a fault in the
local grid, but proving that may be tricky. I
believe there are instruments which log power
surges, but they're probably not something that
most electricians have.
Nick.
[1] I lived in Sheffield for a few years. Multiple
arc furnaces do strange things to the mains
waveform, even when they're hanging straight
off the 230kV line.
--
Nick Chalk ................. once a Radio Designer
Confidence is failing to understand the problem.
