Home Forums Power problems/surge protector problems

Hi everyone,

10 days ago our area had major storms and power outages. Our office must have taken a significant high voltage hit, numerous APC surge protectors were damaged (mostly APC Net7). I opened these, they had significantly charred internal components.

All of these still allowed the PC to work. Some had indicator lights that showed a problem (green light off and/or red light on.) However, several with charred components had green on/red off. So these were damaged but did not show it.

Additionally, several APC UPSs seemed OK, but failed immediately when unplugged (batteries were OK).

My concern is that these devices had failed, and were not protecting, but half of them gave no sign of having failed.

Any suggestions? Stick with APC or switch brands? Any way to tell if a surge protector is actually protecting?

Thanks. Gene

You will get a lot of replies on this, but the way I can tell how many problems I will have with APC is to count how many APC units I have. Well, maybe it's not that bad.

For my money, CyberPower is the only way to go. I have never had a problem with them.

Surge protectors don't really protect much. They have a wide acceptance range for the input voltage. That continuous inconsistent power output may damage the device. I'm going to have to go with Bert on the CyberPower. I have 3 900W Active PFC UPS's from them. They work pretty well.

They also have rackmount versions/more advanced versions (network management, multiple batteries) if you want that.