Minor cause, major effect:
damage caused by surges

Our dependency on electrical and electronic equipment continues to increase, in both our professional and private lives. Data networks in companies, for auxiliary equipment in hospitals and fire departments for example, are vital for the real-time transfer of information that has long since been indispensable. Sensitive databases, e.g. in banks or media publishers, need reliable transmission paths.
It is not only lightning strikes that pose a latent threat to these systems. More and more frequently, today´s electronic aids are damaged by surges caused by remote lightning discharges or switching operations in large electrical systems. During thunderstorms, too, high volumes of energy are instantaneously released. These voltage peaks can penetrate a building through all manner of conductive connections and cause enormous damage.

What are the consequences of damage caused by surges in our daily lives?
The most obvious one is the destruction of electrical equipment. In private households, these are specifically:

• TV/video recorders
• Telephone systems
• Computer systems, hifi systems
• Kitchen equipment
• Monitoring systems
• Fire alarm systems

The failure of such equipment certainly incurs great expense.

What happens when the following suffer outage times/consequential damage:

• Computers (loss of data)
• Heating and hot water system
• Lift, garage door and roller shutter drive
• Activation and/or destruction of the fire/burglar alarm system (costs incurred by false alarm)?

A “vital” topic perhaps, particularly in office buildings.

• Can your company continue to operate smoothly without a host computer or server?
• Have all important data been backed-up in good time?

Growing sums of damage
Current statistics and estimates of property insurers reveals: damage levels caused by surges – excluding consequential or outage costs – long since reached drastic levels due to the growing dependency on electronic “aids”. It´s no surprise, then, that property insurers are checking more and more claims and stipulating the use of devices to protect against surges. Information on protection measures is contained, e. g. in Directive VDS 2010.