This Q & A is one of the thousands posted in our Technical Expertise area and answered by our Voltimum Experts.

Question: What causes power surges?

Answer:  Lightning strikes produce the largest transient overvoltage events in electrical installations, creating surges of thousands of volts lasting less than a millisecond. These can result from direct strikes, but also (remarkably) strikes up to a kilometre away from the installation.

Man-made surges arising from switching event transients on the network, though much smaller in scale, are more frequent and can stress electronic components, causing unplanned outages, damaging or degrading equipment – and ultimately result in equipment failure.

If you want to leave your comment, please register or log in.

Product tests and other information of over 20 partners in the industry.

And here's some amazing content. It's very engaging. right?