Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Surge suppressors.

We had a tree branch knock the power line off our house and the cheap surge protector I had didn't stop from blowing the TV,stereo and VCR(at the time).
It also grounded out on the carpet and burnt a big hole.I was standing there and seen the flash. Scary

Then I went outside to see what had happened and the power line from the pole almost blew into me. That was a life flasher!

An electrical line came down from a home down the street a few years ago. The culprit wasn't a branch though. The fire fighters came upon a grow op. The place actually caught fire, burnt to a crisp. The neighbours that were on the same line got their stuff fried from the surge.

That's some scary stuff you experienced SBrown.

I am one who likes to plug my gear into a surge suppressor, just to have the extra piece of mind. However, when I purchased my plasma TV a few years ago, I was having some issues with the set. Every now and then and sometimes even several times in a minute I would get a flicker in the picture, where it would quickly have a black screen and then go back on. This was very annoying and distracting. I started looking online and apparently plasma sets are sensitive to fluctuations in the voltage. So I got the APC H15, which is a surge suppressor and voltage regulator in one when they went on sale for about $150. So this unit helps to keep the voltage within a certain tolerance. This almost completely solved the flicker problem on my plasma set. I might notice it flicker once per two months, where it used to be almost a daily problem (and on some days it would flicker so bad that I didn't even want to watch it).

Your problem could be a poor connection or part that is going out of spec somewhere that is causing the screen to go black and come back on. A bad solder could act intermittently like that. If the UPS is supposed to control the voltage and voltage fluctuations are what's causing it, then shouldn't the flicker stop completely?

I don't think it is a bad solder. I returned the first TV since it was doing this within the 30 day period. The second identical TV acted the exact same way. After that I set up a dedicated outlet with only the TV on a breaker by itself. This did nothing for the problem. The voltage regulator finally fixed the problem. Like I said, the flicker might happen once per month or two. The APC doesn't have a battery inside and so it can only store up power for maybe a split second dip in voltage and still maintain a consistent voltage to the TV. So what I am probably noticing once per month is a slightly longer dip in voltage that the APC cannot keep up with, and I get a flicker. If I spend approximately $1000 to get the APC with battery back up built in I bet it would completely solve the problem. But, the problem that I still notice is so rare that it doesn't even bother me now.