Surge Protection RTU units

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Scott C

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I need to install surge protection for a customer who has had issues in the past with lighting causing damage to their two units. I am looking for a reliable cost effective way to do this. Also is there a A/C dissconnect switch with built in protection that will work for this? this is a one story strip mall.
 
Pierre C Belarge

Pierre C Belarge

Senior Member
Location
Westchester County, New York
Scott
Welcome to the forum.

Is the lightning hiting the units themselves?
If this is so, I do not believe there is much in the form of direct lightning TVSS/Surge protection for that type of situation... you would be wasting your customer's money in selling them a TVSS/Surge product that does not exist.

Maybe a lightning protection system... That is a better question for someone like Derek to answer.

Good Luck in finding an answer!!!
 
dereckbc

dereckbc

Moderator
Staff member
Location
Plano, TX
Scott define RTU please. Are you referring to a Remote Terminal Unit used for contro, telemetry and data? If so it takes more than just protecting the AC power. You have to go an extra step and protect all the I/O lines and have a common ground reference for all systems.
 
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Scott C

Member
Rtu

Rtu

These are A/C Air conditioners. I was told that they were not hit directly although very little else has been affected by the surge.
 
mdshunk

mdshunk

Senior Member
Location
Right here.
HVAC techs are quick to blame odd electrical failures on lightning. You could do a perfect job protecting from the imagined surges, and their problems would persist. If it was me looking into their work, I'd want a little more detail of the exact problems they're experiencing. I would want to determine the components that are failing, compare that to the unit's schematic, and see if any other failure modes (besides lightning) would take out that part or parts.
 
petersonra

petersonra

Senior Member
Location
Northern illinois
Occupation
engineer
mdshunk said:
HVAC techs are quick to blame odd electrical failures on lightning. You could do a perfect job protecting from the imagined surges, and their problems would persist. If it was me looking into their work, I'd want a little more detail of the exact problems they're experiencing. I would want to determine the components that are failing, compare that to the unit's schematic, and see if any other failure modes (besides lightning) would take out that part or parts.
Click to expand...

It is not only HVAC techs that blame mysterious problems on lightening, surges, or "bad grounds".
 
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W6SJK

Senior Member
To answer the original post, yes there a zillion TVSS mfrs out there that make protection for panelboards, which is what you would want to use for the RTU. Look around at Liebert and Current Technology for examples. But I also agree that more investigation would be a good idea.
 
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marshallf3

Member
Low voltage (brownout) conditions are often the culprit here so a TVSS isn't going to solve anything. In my experience I've found many cases of a commercial building that simply didn't have the service feed properly tightened - pretty bad news when it's the neutral.

Check it out and, if in doubt, contact your local power & light company to verify their ends are good.
 
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