How to Sell Power Conditioning

I know it is another step and is extreme, but I completely agree with having a surge protection waiver signed. Great Idea, then there is no question as to your protection from your professional advice.

The topics of power conditioning vs surge protection are muddled in this article. 

Surge protection should be an easy sell because a good quality unit can be sold for a relatively low price.  Not buying a surge protector for your gear is like riding a fast motorcycle with a t-shirt and shorts.

Power conditioning on the other hand is in a whole different echelon.  The Furmans, Richard Grays, PSAudios, etc. pitch a unit that will protect your equipment as well as clean up any noise from your power source.  They tend to be much more elaborate solutions with varying functionality and results, and are probably much harder to sell.

Good point. I think it is easier to convince a non industry professional or “consumer” to invest in “power conditioning” under the guise of “surge protection” saying that it will protect his investment first and foremost. While still giving the installer/dealer a little wiggle room for the “engineer/nerd” not to feel left out because his system isn’t getting the full 120v it requires for full fidelity, it would only be getting a puny 115-117v (conditions depending). Not to mention that cause’s a whole book of known problems to the average unknowing customer. Now, a power conditioner I know is not as effective against interference as lets say, an “isolated grounding scheme”, but an acceptable band-aid. Again, it is a fine line when you are telling somebody what they know and what they don’t know. Especially when they are signing your check. Keep it simple stupids. Haha. I agree with you Brian about the lack of clarity on “power conditioning v.s. surge protection”. Now that I think about it, aren’t power strips or “surge protectors” built into most equipment racks and if not, pretty much every power strip sold in a computer store has surge protection, I kinda gotta blame the installer for not being aware of basic surge protection practices. Everyone knows not to plug a computer into the wall directly. Why would a 100k+ system be any different. I might be missing some information, but I am interested to hear if that installer had to replace the 10k equip that got KFC’d. (Kentucky Fried Component)

So that said, does everyone feel that a $20 surge protector will be just as effective as a $100-$300 Monster piece?

I was curious myself, that was a good question, here is what I found. Just happens to be about Monster, it could just as easily be Panamax.

# PROTECTION. Monster products are designed to protect ALL signal paths into and out of your system. It does little to no good to purchase a protector that only protects your AC outlets, in fact, this can make things worse. you must protect all your signals. Do not be fooled into thinking that little phone company device hooked near your box outside the house (called a network interface device) will protect you against all surges. We’ve heard numerous reports of damage through the phone lines. The same applies to coax and satellite lines.

# JOULES. Monster has designed their products to provide the highest Joule protection ratings we know of.

# RESPONSE TIME. Monster surge proectors have a response time of less than 1 nanosecond. This is critical in protecting from surges! If you have a UPS or are considering one, please note that most of them provide a 5NS response time, this is NOT good. Also, a question to ask if you are considering a UPS is does it protect all the signal paths? Also, please be aware that UPSs add LOTS of noise to an audio/video system, you will greatly reduce the quality of your system with a UPS. See the Surgegate section for further considerations.

# PROTECTION and “Series Mode”. What about series mode protection? Series mode protection by itself is good, but has some weaknesses. One major weakness is that common mode impulses generated by in house surges or other types of surges are unprotected by a series mode surge protector, bet they didn’t tell you that. Or, maybe they said they do not occur or are not large enough to cause any damage? If you believe this, email us and we will email you something that disproves this. The UL1449 spec they like to quote *requires* a common mode surge test, why would they have the test if they were not important? Also, see below as to why they still claim they pass UL1449 despite having no common mode protection. Monster protects against common mode surges. Also, series mode proponents claim that other protectors have short lifetimes, while theirs does not (gee, they did tell you that). Imagine if you will numerous Monster protectors failing within their 3 year, 5 year, or lifetime warranties, do the math and figure how many per day would be replaced if that were the case, you’ll find it is many thousands, would they still be in businesss? Make sense? Another claim is that Monster shunts all surges to ground. Not so! Surges are diverted to neutral and ground, making all 3 phases have the same potential, meaning no downstream damage, unlike the claims (gee, they forgot that part also). Also, they claim that mode 2 protectors inflate by massive factors the ground reference, we can direct you to sources in the power industry that says this can happen without *any* mode 2 protector, the case is vastly overstated, and since they do not protected against those types of surges… Oh, and while they say “mode 2” protection is bad, they forget to mention they really do NOT pass the UL1449 rating as that requires passing the mode 2 protection test, it is part of the UL1449 spec. They get out of it by not having ANY protection except for hot-neutral, and therefore there is nothing to test, all semantics. Which means other types of surges are *completely* unprotected. We can direct you to web sites that discuss what happens with phone lines and surge protection in such a scenario. Ask them what happens during a prolonged surge, as in 10 seconds, or minutes say during an ice storm. Also, if the surge exceeds their rated capacity, any coil design gets overloaded, and overloaded coils pass through the voltage. If they tell you you cannot possibly get a surge in excess of 6,000 volts, we can provide information on that as well. Finally, most of the ones we’ve seen do NOT guarantee they will protect your system, Monster does! Now why would that be?

Why Buy Monster Surge protection(23 September 2009)

http://www.powersystemsdirect.com/Why_Buy_Monster_power_Cable_Surge_Protection_c29_23_49.php

http://snipurl.com/s2jpt

I was curious myself, that was a good question,

Not all surge protectors are the same.  I have found in general that $30 surge protectors have significantly higher joule ratings than $5 specials, including better response times and cable/phone slots.  You can dramatically increase your protection by just spending $25 more.  The next step is the $100ish range where you will get better damage guarantees and better coverage for some of the less common types of surges, and maybe some passive filtering.

I think the “bang for your buck” runs out somewhere in between a $30 and a $100 surge protector, depending on the cost of your system.

Making active improvements to your power supply is where power “conditioning” kicks in, usually starting around $300.

I wouldn’t give the client the option to sign a waiver to avoid buying surge protection. Everything i install has my name on it and i wont cut corners on things that MUST be there.

The client can choose what speakers and TV’s they want but the type of wire used, the rack & installation hardware and surge protection/UPS are non negotiable. You either agree to it or go somewhere else.

I agree with 39, but have had some clients that just to refuse to spend an extra $300-$500 for surge protection even though they dropped big bucks. In those cases, I did make them sign a waiver. The good news is we have had such crazy weather lately in NJ, these people have suffered system failure. Thus, we were either able to sell them new components and have the client deflect the costs through their homeowner’s insurance, or just re-boot the system and finally sell them an APC UPS or Surgex protector.

Bottom line: The words, “I told you so,” are a beautiful thing.