Why are they suspecting something electrical, it could be a mechanical problem?
A few weeks ago my overhead GDO started kicking out on overload and I found that one of the balance torsion springs had broke, or I have seen the rollers hang up on a miss aligned part of the track.
so maybe the overload is doing it's job?
Generally surge suppressors do very little in stopping transients down stream if there is a good distance from it and a load, while they will block some transients coming from the supply side, if you have something producing transients on the circuit that a load is on then good quality point of use surge devices should be used by this I mean surge devices that use more then just MOV's as its protection device.
The reason is transients are a high frequency event, and conductors can have a very high impedance to the transient source if it is closer to the load then to the panel mounted surge protector, this is one of the reasons behind why manufactures of panel mounted whole house surge protectors require us to use the shortest possible amount of wire to the panel connection, because the longer the wire the impedance climbs quickly at the high frequency of the transients, this is why both panel mounted and point of use surge protection is a must with the point of use devices with line chokes and LC circuits and or other methods having a greater ability to protect the equipment then a panel mounted unit can ever have because these methods must have the current to the load pass through the chokes and LC circuits to the load to be effective.
I posted about this in this thread "
Bryant quadplex surge-suppressor outlets"
But without knowing the design of the overload system the power supply uses, I have know idea if it would be susceptible to line surges, if it is some sort of electronic overload maybe, but if it is just a thermal overload I highly doubt that line surges are the problem, even most electronic overloads would not have a problem with fast transients as my GDO overloads is electronic and with the motor and control relays right there in the same box, it would seem that this would be a problem??