You can always have your electrician add a whole house surge protector into the other panel. I used a unit made by Panamax. I am not sure if these are as good as what the power company provides.

Our HVAC vendor tried to blame some electrical issues we had with one of our heat pumps on a ppwer surge and said that these types of issues were not covered by the warranty. I foguht them on it (and eventually got them to pay up) BUT immediately added whole house surge protectors so that they could not weasel out of the warranty. After seeing a Holmes on Homes about power surge damage, it seemed like a great idea anyway and it wasn't a lot of money.

Unless these boxes are very far apart, a surge suppressor installed in one box would likely also protect the second box. A supressor is installed in parallel across the incoming power lines. The same power lines feed both panels.

And don't think that whole house surge protection will solve all your problems. I'm pretty liberal with local suppression as well. Mov's are cheap.

ron

I have local surge surpressor outlets too for all high end electronics that plug in. Max current rating for these outlets is 20 amps. I believ they are marketed as hospital grade outlets and have alarms which can be disabled.

I tried to find local suppression devics for higher amperage devices but ended up up using the the Panamax devices in the panels.

I think the surge outlets ran about 45 dollars each and the panamax was 125 each plus the dual pole breakers.

joed:

Do you mean that the power company can install a surge protector on one meter and the other would be automatically protected? or do they have to do additional outside work?

Hospital grade receptacles are only mechanically better, they do not have surge protection. Don't get me started on the silly-assed audiofile receptacles.

The panel-style surge protectors will work just about anywhere you can mount them. MOVs as I said are cheap, and available for more current rating than you can practially need (even the smallest are good to 70A). The big problem with MOV's is knowing when they've sucked up a surge and fried themselves open.

RICHARD: A surge protector conducts surges on the lines to ground. Ideally you want one as close to the surge point (often service entrance) as well as one as close to the device as you can get...but as long as they are electrically connected (i.e., all the breakers are untripped) they will abosrb at least some of the surge.

The surge suppressors in the attached link won't help with your HVAC equipment but they are the best I've found at a somewhat reasonable price for protecting my expensive audio and video gear since they don't contain any MOVs and essentially last forever.

Here is a link that might be useful: Brickwall Surge Supressors

You have two meters? I thought you had one meter and two panels. Do you have two drop lines from the POCO as well?

joed:

I re-read my post, and it is ambiguous about the two meters. I am sorry I am late in posting a reply, but I had a real problem logging in as a user today. We have 400 amp service, but it is broken down to two 200 amp circuit breaker boxes each with their own meter. KCP&L then on their bill has "heat energy charge" and "energy" charge since they can read both meters with the total being of course the sum of the two. The meters on the outside of the house are close together on a large box with one post coming up from the ground to the box, and I guess all splitting between the two circuit breaker boxes goes on in the large box. That is all I know. So KCP&L wants to put their surge protector on the meter that reads the "energy" part. The other meter has the HVAC, water heaters, and ejector pump. The question was does the surge protector on the one meter protect everything in the house. KCP&L as of this moment has given me no written statement that it does. Maybe this is a trivial issue to a sophisticated electrician or an electrical engineer, but it is not to me as the average homeowner.

Hey Ron - before you open you blow hole and make yourself look like a dummy , how about reading a little. See part 8280 through 8381. The Hostipal Grade outlets are MOVs and are not audio recepticals.

Catalog Numbers 8280, 8281, 8380 and 8381 receptacles are designed for use where transient voltage surge suppressors are specified and hard-wired devices are preferred. The Hospital Grade receptacles pass stringent UL 498HG testing and are suitable for high-abuse health care, industrial and commercial applications. Matching-color wallplates are included with each device. MOV-based circuitry provides surge protection for normal and common modes (phase-neutral, phase-ground and neutral-ground) and both an LED indicator and an audible alarm monitor surge suppression status. The receptacles have been tested to ANSI/IEEE C62.41 standards for Category A and B environments and are UL 1449 (2nd Edition) Listed. The devices are also backed by Leviton s Limited Ten-Year Warranty.

Here is a link that might be useful: Hospital Grade Surge Protectors

Sniffdog,

Please be considerate of other contributors.

Generically, surge suppressors and hospital-grade recepticles are two different things. Yes, in the specific products that you reference in your after-the-fact post, both features are included in a single product, but not all hospital-grade recepticles include surge suppression.

To the original post, even if there are multiple meters, a "whole house" surge suppressor should have some positive effect. As Ron points out, you really need multiple points of suppression to be effective, since you really don't know where the surge is going to originate.

Did you read Rons post to me? Talk to him about being considerate to others. He made this statement :

"Hospital grade receptacles are only mechanically better, they do not have surge protection. Don't get me started on the silly-assed audiofile receptacles"

Not only is he wrong - he's rude. I was just pointing that out.

Being a long time reader of Ron's posts, I think he's referring to the $150 receptacles that claim questionable benefits. I suppose one person's attempt at humor is another's rudeness. Point taken.

Here is a link that might be useful: expensive receptacle

"A surge protector conducts surges on the lines to ground."

Or to the other leg for 240 V systems.

There are at least three paths in a simple 120 V device.

Line-to-neutral, neutral to ground, and line to ground.

For 240 V you throw in a line-to-line device for at least four.

Three phase normally gets 3 line-to-line and three line to neutral, and three morte line-to-ground (line-to-neutral is omited on delta systems).

There are 'non-degrading' surge devices that do not loose power handling with each non-current limited breakdown.

With MOVs the problem is not the transient usually, but the available current in the circuit.
Once the MOV is turned on, it tries to conduct ALL the current present until the voltage falls below the hold point.

Usually the surge is less than a fraction of the 60 cycle power, so the large current flows so briefly it may not even trip a breaker.

Larger surges can keep the MOV turned on for longer, resulting in significant power dissipation.

Non-degrading devices have the same issues with available circuit current up to their power rating.