There's nothing more important than protecting your home and its contents – including, of course, your family. That's why it's crucial to take steps to guard against lightning strikes, which can cause major damage to your home’s electrical work and can even start a fire. Fortunately, there are several measures you can take to reduce the chance of lightning harming your home, possessions or family. Read on to learn how to keep these powerful forces of nature at bay.

Stop Surges in Their Tracks

Chances are, you won't ever have to experience a direct lightning strike to your home. For that, you can consider yourself lucky, but that doesn't mean that lightning can't affect you in other ways. If the bolt hits anywhere in the immediate area, especially to an electric line or something else connected to the power grid, a power surge can strike your home and destroy or damage your electrical work and electronics. One strike can be enough to ruin your new computer or television, or at least subtract a few years from their lifespans.

Fortunately, you can add layers of protection to your electrical work so your devices and appliances are less vulnerable to power surges. The first step is to purchase surge protectors for all your expensive devices in lieu of plugging them directly into your wall outlets. You can also have an electrician install a comprehensive surge protector in your circuit box which will protect the electrical work for the entire home.

The Importance of Staying Grounded

Beyond surge protection, you do need to protect your home from direct lightning strikes as well. Your local building code mandates that homes be grounded so that high levels of electric charge can escape into the Earth, dramatically reducing the risk of a fire or damage to your electrical work. If you live in an older home, it's a good idea to have an electrician evaluate your grounding system and upgrade it to modern standards if necessary.

Finally, if you live in an area with frequent thunderstorms, or your house is particularly vulnerable to lightning strikes, installing a lightning rod on the roof is a good idea. These rods stretch high above your home, attracting any lightning likely to strike nearby and conducting the charge into the ground. They can be a life saver if, for example, your house is isolated from other structures and set on the top of a hill.

Keeping Your Family Safe and Sound

With a few extra layers of protection, you can reduce the danger of lightning damage to your home and family to a minimum. If you need help setting up a system to protect your home electrical work from lightning strikes, contact an expert electrician today.

An automatic transfer switch consists of an electrical power control device that reroutes electricity under certain power conditions. It enables the safe switching of power from one source to another. Consequently, this ensures a safe and reliable transfer of power while minimizing the risks of fire, damage, or back feeding of power to the utility lines.

An ATS ensures continuity of power to the load. However, the time between loss of power in the utility line and the time the load is connected to the alternative power source remains critical in some applications. For example, a power loss for a few seconds is unacceptable in some hospitals or with emergency equipment. In some of these installations, an intermediate power supply is utilized. These include the battery-based inverter or UPS power to fill the gap between the loss of power and connection to the generator power.

Advanced ATS devices may have the ability to detect the voltage dips characteristic of power failures and automatically start the generator before the utility power goes off completely.

Consumers need to ensure that the ATS will have adequate capacity to handle the generator power. Things to consider include the voltage rating, continuous current rating, and type of load. In addition, consider the mode of transfer, desired transfer time delay, ATS style, and more.

The four main categories of ATS devices are defined by the following transition modes.

Open-transition: The open transaction mode of operation disconnects the primary power before connecting the power from the secondary source. This break-before-make operation means a short duration when there is no connection to either of the power sources.

Fast closed-transition: The ATS is based on the make-before-break switching operation. It parallels the two supplies for about 100 milliseconds after which it disconnects one of the sources. This operation ensures that the load is never disconnected from power.

Soft closed-transition: The soft closed-transition transfer synchronizes generator power with the utility line and then transfers the load from the utility to the generator. When transferring the load back to the utility, follow a similar process.  In this case, the generator output slowly decreases until completely off.

Sub-cycle transfer: These are based on semiconductor switches and are the fastest automatic transfer switches. Upon detecting a power failure, the ATS transfers the load to the other source within the first one-quarter of the electrical cycle. This ensures no power interruption to the load. Sub-cycle ATS devices are the most complex and expensive compared to those using mechanical switches.

Since consumers may not have all the necessary technical knowledge to choose the correct application, it can be a good idea to hire a qualified electrical contractor to select the correct sizing and installation.

How much electricity is your household using? Chances are, you skim over your electric bill each month and if the price doesn’t seem out of the ordinary, you move on. This is what most of us do. It’s become the norm. But have you ever thought about what electrical usage and energy bills are like in other states and countries?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that the national average is 909 kilowatt hours (kWh)/month, with monthly electric costs of $110.20. The EIA also breaks down the average electric usage by state. You can download the full spreadsheet with all state data here.

Keep in mind that the number of kilowatt hours (kWh) doesn’t necessarily dictate the costs, so the state paying the most may not be the state actually using the most electricity. Electric costs vary state-by-state. The average monthly price tag that emerges from your electrical usage depends on how hot/cold and urban/rural your home state is, as well as what the area costs are. For instance, even though Louisiana has the highest monthly consumption (1,273 kWh), Hawaii, (the state that uses the second-least amount of electricity) pays the most at $203 per month. Furthermore, Maine, the state that uses the least amount of electricity each month (531 kWh), still pays more on average for electric than New Mexico ($75 per month). However, Maine does pay a similar average price ($77.77), so their low energy conservation plays to their benefit.

Wondering where our home state of Texas fits in? Well, we are the 5th highest electric consumers in the country, using 1,174 kWh/month and paying around $133.33 on our monthly electric bills. Nationally, that puts Texas just above average in our electric use.

In terms of our country’s impact globally, overall the United States has the second highest household energy consumption in the world, with homes using over 11,698 kWh per year. This is two to three times more than European households and about twenty times more than Nigerian homes. Moreover, each American individually uses about 4,500 kWh each year, which is about five times the average for all people who have electricity in their homes around the world. But of course, these disparities are affected by differences in physical house size, local electricity prices, appliances, the amount of sunshine, and access to alternative fuels for heating and cooking.

This month, it could be an interesting experiment to compare your energy bill to the averages to see how you stack up! If you’re paying way above the average for your state/country, it might be a good idea to see how you can save more energy throughout the year. Luckily, our site is filled with blogs with tips and tricks for spending less on electric!

Sources:

U.S. Energy Information Administration

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