Hi Matt,
I appreciated your article on the surged iMac. We live out in eastern Chittenden County, and we experience a lot of power outages. In the early 90’s, when we lived on the Main Road in Huntington, we noticed that the light bulbs in our home were not lasting very long. When we looked into the problem, we learned that we were near the end of the power line, and each time we lost power, we experienced a power surge when the power was restored, and that it was likely impacting our light bulbs amongst other things in our home.
We also learned that you could get a surge protector that you install on your circuit breaker to protect from surges entering your house from the main power line. This has greatly extended the life of our bulbs and no doubt has protected our electrical appliances and computers. We’ve since moved and are serviced by another utility, and we lose power even more frequently. When we built this house, we put a surge suppressor on the circuit breaker, and we still use suppressors as an interface between our larger electrical appliances and the wall outlet.
You might want to pass this along to any of your rural customers who lose power frequently.
Cheers,
Gary