[ale] help providing stable power to pc's to ride through storms

Tue May 22 21:58:43 EDT 2012

Lightning hit a tree in my yard about 6 feet from where I was standing on
the other side of a block and brick wall. The electric field was so large
it light up a pair of shrink-wrapped 4' lights and melted the plastic to
the bulbs. It induced a large enough spike in the network lines that all
NICs and switches died instantly. None of the surge protectors were hit.
Over the next 2 weeks every system failed that was plugged in at all.
Motherboards, CPUs, RAM, power supplies, drives, tape devices, all add-on
cards. I had to replace all the systems and start from scratch. The backups
were crapped except for the boxed, archived ones from months back. The tape
drives were toasted so recovery was crapped.

The only bright side to this mayhem was the customer system that was brand
new and still on the bench being assembled had no wires attached and was
not impacted at all. Having to replace all the other systems PLUS a $6k
custom server would have been a total nightmare.

I like the torriodial iron inductor idea. Big honkin' choke coil!

My uncle was a HAM (KIP for those who knew him). His antenna feed included
about 10 loops of super fine wire (32 gauge or so)  in a coil about 2' in
diameter. Signal was great and it acted as a giant fusible link.

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 9:37 PM, Neal Rhodes <neal at mnopltd.com> wrote:

> **
> The original Best Ferrups UPS would be the most effective lightening
> protection.
>
> They were designed for Police/Fire installations so that nearby hits would
> not only not damage systems, but wouldn't even cause them to reboot.
>
> The core of the system is a ferro-resonant transformer which gives a
> flywheel effect, wanting to resonate at 60hz.   This gives it a 1000:1
> attentuation on spikes.
>
> Meanwhile, a sine-wave inverter jumps online IF the outside voltage drops,
> perfectly sychronizing with the Ferro transformer as its voltage collapses,
> so that your equipment never notices a ripple.
>
> We've had the same one for...... 20 years.    Other than replacing
> batteries, it just works.    Our servers last well into technical
> senility.   Like 10 years.
>
> If you had an oversized Ferrups, it would ride out the storms and give you
> maybe 30 minutes UPS time if everything died.
>
> Funny thing - I remember when phone lines and modems were the most likely
> damaged items.   We always used surge protectors on modem lines.     Seems
> like I never hear of a DSL induced lightening problem these days, and we
> use no protective devices - i don't even know if they exist.
>
> I can well remember a lightening strike on a tree in the back yard
> inducing enough EMF on a RS-232 terminal wire to blow the UARTS on my
> wife's serial terminal, even though power  was disconnected during the
> storm.
>
> And then there was the time the tornado blew out the boiler on our 486
> steam engine.....
>
>
>
> Neal
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, 2012-05-21 at 20:36 -0400, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>
> Hi guys,
>
> I need some electrical power advice. It's possible you will give me the
> answer and I won't be able to afford it, but I'd like to know what you
> think.
>
> I fairly recently got almost all my PC's running NTP, whether they're
> running Linux or Windows. One PC, which has a gps attached, is the time
> server for the others. Whenever I crank the PC's, I like to get certain
> application windows up and running and positioned in certain ways. This
> includes NTP loopstats graphs when I'm running Windows or terminal screens
> with ntpq when I'm running Linux. I like to have certain Firefox windows
> open on each system and things like weather radar and pandora on one
> system. I also like to verify that the gps is working and that it's machine
> is serving time to all the others.
>
> Counting my wife's machine, my computer table has 4 laptops, 1 desktop, 2
> monitors, and miscellaneous hubs, speakers, phones, etc. Too shut down
> everything and restart it and get it the way I want it running again takes
> 30 - 60 minutes. The problem is, that in the spring and summer, I end up
> shutting everything down almost every night due to electrical storms. I
> have a small UPS / surge protector that provides about 10 minutes of run
> time, but I don't trust that enough to leave the systems on during a
> lightning storm.
>
> I would like to find a way to provide stable safe power even though storms
> are in the area, so I want to isolate the electronics from the main house
> power supply. Total power drain with everything running is about 350 W. I
> want the system to be unbothered by surges and brownouts and short black
> outs less than 20 minutes or so. As long as the house power is mostly on, I
> want to be able to run right through. I could do a minimal amount of that
> with my UPS, but my bigger concern is surges, spikes, and brownouts.
>
> I essentially don't want to be shutting down unless I'm physically having
> to run to the basement for cover.
>
> Best case scenario: be able to run with house power continually out for 2
> - 3 hours.
> Next best case scenario: be able to run with house power essentially on
> but fluttering and flickering for 2 - 3 hours.
>
> I had the following thoughts.
>
> A) Have a MUCH bigger, as in 20 X bigger, UPS. It would have to trip
> quickly on at the first hint of a brownout, or run in continuous UPS mode,
> and would have to have really beefy surge protection. I don't want it to
> even blink during a lightning strike to ground 1/2 mile from my house. Of
> course, I know that if lightning hits right near the house, on the house,
> or right on my power line, all bets are off.
>
> B) Have a 500W - 1000W motor generator set. The house power runs the
> motor, and the generator runs the electronics. There is total electrical
> isolation between the two electrical systems. A smaller UPS between the
> generator and the electronics could handle shorter brownouts and blackouts.
> A long blackout would shut me down, but the UPS could give me time to
> terminate everything.
>
> What do you guys think would be a good way to handle it? Please don't say
> shut down and leave home for 3 hours. I already thought of that.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>
> --
>
> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
> Please excuse my potential brevity.
>
> (To whom it may concern. My email address has changed. Replying to former
> messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the wrong
> address. Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very
> quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
> 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to
consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they
please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
- *2011 Noam Chomsky

http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
*
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