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While they are probably well acquainted with power failures, most homeowners are not aware that power management technology exists at all. This equipment, however, not only provides them with a sort of insurance policy that prevents quality degradation or outright damage to their systems, it also serves to reduce the number of house calls a custom installer may be forced to make.

There are a number of entities between the source of generation and your house, and many people think of a power company as some quasi-governmental agency that dips a ladle in a golden lake of power and pours it into the ends of the wires that go into their walls, observed Bob Smith, vice president of Panamax in Petaluma, California. When it comes to power distribution, he added, its not so much a question of making it, but managing it.

While residential systems are growing increasingly sophisticated, this doesn’t mean that sensitive electronic equipment no matter how advanced it may won’t fall victim to the power surges, spikes, brown-outs, and black-outs that occur for any number of reasons. Those living in Florida, for example, are accustomed to a stormy climate, and the ensuing power outages that result. Even residents in the most temperate of geographical locations run the risk of seeing at least some fluctuation in their power, as utilities struggle to keep up with demand. Just ask any Californian who grew accustomed to going without air conditioning during the brown-outs, or those who were in the Northeastern U.S. when the entire grid went black.

Smith acknowledged that initially, the main concern for power management systems manufacturers was to deal with power irregularities. There were spikes and surges, and the main concern was preventing damage to the equipment. We created point-of-use surge protectors for sensitive circuits like microprocessors, he said. However, as audiovisual gear became more prominent in the home, the focus shifted to dealing with power irregularities. As the A/V world came into being, we moved into conditioning power eliminating signal impurities off of the power line so that the picture and sound would be as the manufacturer intended the equipment to produce.

Michael McCook, senior principal and co-founder of SurgeX in Pipersville, Pennsylvania, summarized the demands on power management technology developers in this way: What has been important will continue to be important. It's about the removal of power anomalies from the AC power line, such as transient voltage surges, EMI/RFI interference, and the ultimate protection of the equipment that is being utilized by the consumer, he said.

SurgeX recently celebrated its sixth North American patent for Advanced Series Mode technology, which is a follow-up to the companys Series Mode technology. This type of product has typically been known as a surge suppressor, and prior to our technology coming along, was dealt with by surge diverters; surge energy would appear in your building, ...

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