Lightning ever burn ya electronics?

[shark]

I got wacked a few days ago by what I perceived to be a very close lightning strike. Big pop outside and my power went out, came back up real fast and bonkered out again before I could get to the furman and turn everything off. The Furman has a protection circuit on it but it didnt help. The volts got stuck reading 155. Not enough amps to blow the circuit but enough damage to trickle thru some equipment. Im guessing I can look for something that will protect me in these matters better than the Furman did. Those little power strips with the breakers are trash.

Blew one channel of my QSC power amp that blew out the15" JBL sub. Then wasted my Eventide H9.

QSC has been replaced with 2 Crown amps on sale
JBL got re-coned. Have 2 JBLs so I did both of them. They are called vintage speakers now.
H9 getting an RMA for return.

I jus think If I had turned it all off during the storm I wouldnt have had this happen.RIGHT!!!
BUT when it thunders and lightning outside I can crank it up and the neighbors cant hear me.

My cost this time for being stupid is at around 1000 bucks. Im getting better at keeping my dumb tax down

 

[geddy]

A typical lightning flash is about 300 million Volts and about 30,000 Amps. In comparison, household current is 120 Volts and 15 Amps. There is enough energy in a typical flash of lightning to light a 100-watt incandescent light bulb for about three months or the equivalent compact fluorescent bulb for about a year.

I'd recommend unplugging during lightning

 

[THDNUT]

household current is 120 Volts and 15 Amps. There is enough energy in a typical flash of lightning to light a 100-watt incandescent light bulb for about three months or the equivalent compact fluorescent bulb for about a year.

So, a 100 watt bulb burning for 3 months would consume 216 kilowatt hours of electricity. I would have thought that a lightning bolt would have more energy than that.

 

[LocoTex]

Back when I was an apartment dweller, many years ago, I lived in an apartment that had a stone fireplace with a brass colored metal border around it. It also was fronted by a wide stone ledge wide enough to sit on.This was before flatscreen tvs, and I had just a 13" tv that I put on the ledge.

One day there was a storm with a lot of lightning activity. I was sitting at the dining room table watching the tv whilst eating when lightning struck my building. I saw it jump from that metal border to the tv and fry it. I was damn glad I wasn't in the living room. My stereo system was on a table against a wall to the side of the fireplace and the receiver was also fried. I figure the charge ran through the wiring and hit the receiver since I didn't see it jump from the tv.

I hated losing that Kenwood receiver because I bought it when I was in the Air Force.....and it had a solid wood cabinet. I had it repaired, but it never sounded the same.

 

[six-string]

i have a couple of Monster brand 1600 power conditioners. older models now i know, but they work.
about 5 years ago, i had the Home theater set up all hooked into one, and the TV guy had just been around to upgrade the fiber optic cable right into the house modem etc.
anyway....we had a thunderstorm later that day- i heard a loud pop and then everything shut off.
lucky- only the power conditioner was fried and everything else was fine.

usually if i have warning of a storm i will unplug but sometimes you can't be there.

 

[Uncle Vinnie]

A typical lightning flash is about 300 million Volts and about 30,000 Amps. In comparison, household current is 120 Volts and 15 Amps. There is enough energy in a typical flash of lightning to light a 100-watt incandescent light bulb for about three months or the equivalent compact fluorescent bulb for about a year.

I'd recommend unplugging during lightning

Imperial volts and amps, or metric volts and amps?

 

[krauley]

I'd recommend unplugging during lightning

Live in northeast Florida and this is standard procedure for me.

 

[OHIOSTEVE]

Lightning flickered my power last night....everything is fine except the grandkids wii is now toast.

 

[Roberteaux]

One time, in the early 80's in Central Florida, I was sitting around in my living room, kinda dozing while sorta watching television.

I'd noticed that we were enjoying one of those lovely "sun showers" we get so frequently here. That is, there was a cumulonimbus cell a few miles away, with my house being located beneath the "anvil" at the very top of the cloud, where the cumulus begins to assume a more stratiform configuration as part of its life cycle as a storm cell...

Thus, we were getting a nice, light rain while also enjoying full sunshine. It's weather like this that puts the "flora" in Florida.

However, once in a while you can be in the midst of a sun shower, and yet the dying cumulonimbus has built up enough friction up there to deliver one last bolt-- literally outta the blue. And in the case at hand, that bolt happened to hit my fireplace chimney.

Holy shit, it was really LOUD. As I said, I was sort of dozing, but when I got that bright flash of light along with the explosive sound of the bolt blasting into the sky, I was wide awake more or less instantly.

I went outside, noted that this lightning bolt dislodged a couple of bricks from the chimney... but that was about it. Walking back into the house through my back door, I found that a night light-- one of those little ones that uses an Xmas tree light bulb and has a little flip switch-- had actually flipped itself on, with the switch then melting into the "on" position.

So weird! Then I went back to the living room and noticed something that managed to slide by me earlier: the color television I was sorta watching was one of those old CRT display jobs... and the TV was on when the bolt struck and still on afterwards... but now the TV screen produced only a very beautiful, deep purple-magenta color as a solid field of color... like purple computer wallpaper or something.

And the TV no longer produced sound. That circuit was apparently completely fried, while the circuit that powered the CRT stayed active... though that TV screen would never produce anything other than a purple/magenta color, ever again.

I really, really liked that beautiful, purplish color, though, and so I hauled the television set into my bedroom and started using it the way other people would use a lava lamp or something: as decorative lighting.

But then the wife made me get rid of it. She said I was a weirdo, for wanting to sit around, bathing in that weird purple light... even when I showed her how if I lit a candle, the yellow color of the flame combined with the magenta to make humans look more or less dead... like weird, yellowy-blue zombies or something.

She was working a mid-shift, and when she came home she found that I had I had the kids in the bedroom playing board games such as Monopoly and Careers. We had the TV and the candle for light, and the kids thought it was so cool for us to all look dead like that while we played board games. They were 10 and 12 years old at the time, and she accused me of "...attempting to teach them to be weirdos, like you."

So, even though we three liked the beautiful purple TV and everything, the wife finally pitched enough of a fit to make me get rid of it.

Damn, it's not as if I hadn't replaced the damaged one immediately or something. But she hated that busted TV anyway...

I'll never understand women.

--R

 

[Jymbopalyse]

Imperial volts and amps, or metric volts and amps?

Translates to roughly 1.21 Gigawatts

 

[geddy]

So, a 100 watt bulb burning for 3 months would consume 216 kilowatt hours of electricity. I would have thought that a lightning bolt would have more energy than that.

Truth be told I just copied from interweb. Didn't put any thought into that aspect. It was the voltage and current that seemed important

 

[Hamtone]

All of my important stuff is on conditioners.

I have had warranty over to my place to replace led puck lights around the house. Interestingly enough, any of the lights i put on dimmers, the resistor in the dimmer switch seemed to protector those lights, but everything else has cooked cob led lights.

 

[THDNUT]

Truth be told I just copied from interweb. Didn't put any thought into that aspect. It was the voltage and current that seemed important

Well the duration of a bolt is very short, usually.

 

[shark]

yes I found out a surge is different from a spike.. duh I think knew that huh already.

I got surged and spiked but I really thought the Furmans would protect me some and disappointed they wont.

The higher end Furman with voltage regulator and surge spike protection isnt cheap but it seems more able to hinder the effect I suffered. Buy one of those and then plug the others into it. I need more plugs anyway. Wall warts eat em spaces up fast at 2 fer 1.

I do know lightning can do some weird stuff to your home. Mom and Dads AC outside got hit and it melted the thermostat in the house. Mom wouldnt use the landline in a storm bec she said when she was a little girl her aunt got shocked using the phone. Well it might have been on them crank phones Granny used;

But yes I made a mistake. It wont be made again