UPS or Surge Protection - Condensing Boiler

NYplumber

Good morning,



Looking to protect two (commercial) condensing boilers from poor electric just as a precaution and to rule out the possibility that the electric is causing an issue. I found quality surge protection from Brickwall, however unsure if that is what these boilers require.



Get as technical as you would like however try not to loose me with the electrical jargon.



Thanks in advance.

icesailor

Electrical Issues:

What are the "electrical Issues" that you think you might be experiencing?

The Power Grid may be having issues and you shouldn't be trying to CYA by CTA.

Its always been my understanding that you can protect anything on the load/power-hot side. But if there are issues with power coming back on the neutral side, especially unbalanced 3 phase services in the area, you are as naked as a new born baby, just delivered and before cleaned up.

NYplumber

brown out

Noticed a brown out while working there a week ago. Few days later found out the air conditioning wasnt working and I found a blown fuse on a three phase. The brown out could have been just that, however the boilers did have issues and we want to eliminate any possibility of the boiler getting poor signals. Flame rectification and mod cons can be picky.

Jamie Hall

Do not confuse the two...

surge protection and power conditioning are two very different things (a UPS is a form of power conditioning).



Surge protection protects against just one thing: overvoltage spikes on one of the hot wires with relation to the neutral.  These spikes can be lethal to equipment; depending on the particular bit of hardware, the shape and size of the spike may or may not be a problem (a big old old electric motor, lots of copper, lots of iron) may not be affected by something which will completely fry a bit of digital electronic equipment.  If spikes are the problem, the surge protection may be the answer.  I would point out that there are flavours of surge protection.



Power conditioning, on the other hand, takes whatever power is coming in and hopefully manipulates it to produce -- in the best forms -- a smooth sine wave or (in three phase) sine waves with the correct nominal voltage between phases (if three phase) and the neutral.  It's not that hard or expensive to do for relatively small loads.  It begins to get very expensive indeed for larger loads.



One needs to define exactly what the problem is that you are dealing with before figuring out what equipment is necessary to achieve the desired result.

NYplumber

Surge

Spoke to a boiler manufacturer that is very technical and they say all that is needed is a surge protector. Brickwall seems to have the best technology in surge protection.

SWEI

Surge Protection

as an industry has a bit of a reputation issue.  There's so much hot air out there it's amazing anything works at all without thousands of dollars of exotic voodoo plugged into it.



Brickwall looks like a power conditioner along the lines of http://www.powervar.com/power-conditioners/ which do a great job of removing all sorts of noise, but you still need something at the service entrance (think big MOVs, SOVs, gas tubes, etc.) to catch the big ones before they get inside.  Same thing with big disruptors on site.