How to protect your home from an electrical surge

Published: April 18, 2021 Last Updated: October 18, 2022

What are electrical surges, what can they do to my appliances & how do I make sure my home is protected? Our electrician Morris has the answers on surge protection.

How to protect your home from an electrical surge - video transcript

[0:04] Mick

So, Morris, you're installing a whole home surge protection system into the switchboard. What does that exactly mean?

[0:11] Morris

Mick, what we're doing is installing these surge protection devices down here. That's going to cover the whole entire home and all your electronic appliances from any power surge. Conventionally the old sport plug in surge protectors like this used to plug these in and it would protect whatever's plugged into it but that still leaves all of your expensive electronic equipment like solar, air conditioning, hot water, etc still at risk.

[0:30] Mick

Yeah, I remember people recommending these for computers when you're first back in the day.

Okay, so what is it actually protecting it from?

[0:37] Morris

So it'll protect against any indirect lightning strike or any power surge or similar event like that.

[0:41] Mick

Okay, and so how does it actually do that?

[0:44] Morris

So when it registers an over-voltage situation it'll disperse all of that excess power down to ground instead of through your electronic equipment.

[0:50] Mick

Sounds great. It's going to protect all my expensive appliances right through the home. And so what if I'm not here and there is an indirect lightning strike or there's been a power surge? How do I know it's still working?

[1:02] Morris

Good question Mick. So these little green indicator windows down here will tell you that they're still in good working order. If they're any other colour than green they're bad and need to be replaced.

[1:09] Mick

Okay, green good, red bad, okay.

[1:12] Morris

Also, good practice would be to have your switchboard looked over every year by an electrician. That's just going to ensure that your safety switches are working and your surge protection is in good working order.

[1:20] Mick

Yeah, okay great and I see this here, tell me about what that is.

[1:24] Morris

So this is just an Energex lock. We put this on the switchboard so that just means that only you, Energex and meter providers have access to your switchboard. Just stops anyone coming in and tinkering with it that shouldn't be. A good thing to note as well, if you and your neighbour have the same lock, you can't open his switchboard and he can't open yours.

[1:39] Mick

Okay, so this is just for me, Energex and the metre readers. It means that no one can actually get in there and actually muck with my switchboard. 

This beautiful switchboard that's been done here. Okay, that sounds like a good idea.

[1:50] Morris

I'll get that on there.

[1:51] Mick

Sounds good.