Overheated Power Strip

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W6SJK

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Posting a friends photos... Odd that a wall wart would draw enough current to overheat the power strip socket. Maybe the wall wart failed first.
 

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I'd say power strip failed first and overloaded the wall wart.

A failed wall wart is not going to overload the power strip.
 
Looks like wall wart failed, power strip probably good except for the heat from the wall wart.

Power strip clean where WW plugged in, so not a case where that the power strip socket was making poor contact.
 
mgookin said:
I'd say power strip failed first and overloaded the wall wart.

A failed wall wart is not going to overload the power strip.
Click to expand...

Disregard that post. For some reason my brain was thinking the wall wart powered the power strip.
 
mgookin said:
Disregard that post. For some reason my brain was thinking the wall wart powered the power strip.
Click to expand...

They might have both failed, i.e. the power supply and the MOVs in the power strip, because the problem turned out to be a loose neutral at the service! They are likely to have other devices close to failure now too.
 
Looks to me like it took on a high voltage for longer duration then the MOV's in either device could handle.

The already mentioned neutral problem is one possibility.
 
sparkie001 said:
They might have both failed, i.e. the power supply and the MOVs in the power strip, because the problem turned out to be a loose neutral at the service! They are likely to have other devices close to failure now too.
Click to expand...

It's not a might. MOVs are designed to short out and shunt across excessive voltage. Common surges are low enough in energy to not burn it out. A sustained over voltage like loose neutral will definitely do it. The best protection against loose neutral is a protective relay or an electronic main circuit breaker that will trigger a trip on over voltage caused by loose or lost neutral in addition to a surge protector that will keep the over voltage from reaching your loads until the protective relay can act.

A loose neutral issue is quite easy for protective relay to sense without nuisance trip because one side will go up as the other side goes down.
 
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