With the growth of the installation of smart homes in Latin America, adopting a preventive approach to protect against overvoltage in these spaces becomes fundamental.
Greg Larson*
Smart homes are designed to increase the comfort and energy efficiency of home owners, providing central control over lighting systems, the HVAC system, home theaters, appliances and more. All these components and systems are interconnected, whether they are located in the residence, in another building (such as in a cabin) or outside. In Latin America, the smart home is a concept that is gaining more and more ground, especially in summer homes and resorts.
Unfortunately, smart home systems and components have a higher risk of damage due to the lightning that abounds in the region. This atmospheric circumstance cannot but be aggravated by the interconnectivity of smart home systems and the copper wiring that goes between buildings. Both are ideal routes for destruction.
These factors expand the entry points of a destructive power surge beyond AC, the telephone's coaxial lines. Lightning can impact the house, cabin, pool filter, outdoor keyboards, and other devices, travel down the wire from one system to another throughout the property and burn them all consecutively.
Because of how often lightning strikes, every home in Latin America —even those that only have home theater or basic appliances—need surge protection. In smart homes, installers can eliminate the risk of lightning by providing surge protection to all appliances inside and outside the home and in other buildings on the property.
Obviously, this means that they also have to provide protection for computers that they are not installing. If they just want to protect their own equipment, they have to completely isolate it from other systems, eliminating all interconnections. In addition, each facility must include both primary and secondary protection, and there must be only one common ground system.
Unfortunately, the need to take special precautions against lightning when installing equipment in smart homes is often overlooked, either partially or completely. An illustrative case is an A/V installation made by the Guatemalan integrator ADARA S.A. The smart residence in question is a beach summer home, located 200 feet from the Pacific Ocean, in an area lashed by extreme lightning.
Composed of several constructions, the house contains a wide variety of electrical appliances, including security systems, pool controls, automated outdoor lights, home theater components, an A/V distribution system, among others. The house has been impacted several times in the past, lightning coming in through the AC lines and outside keyboards and speakers.
After these impacts, many of the appliances in the house were damaged, except for the A/V equipment and home theater that ADARA installed using Panamax energy management solutions. Tired of visiting their beach shelter and finding most of their electronic systems destroyed, the owners of the residence asked ADARA to protect the rest of their electrical appliances against overvoltage. In order to ensure the safety of the house systems, ADARA installed three levels of protection: inside, outside and in the equipment.
They installed surge protection at the main entrance and on the AC power lines that overlook the garden and pool area. For sensitive appliances, they increased surge protection for both AC and data cables. Since the installation, the owners have not had damage to any of their devices and can now fully enjoy their summer home.
Sometimes overlooking energy protection in a smart home is done simply to reduce costs. However, it is often the result of a lack of awareness about energy management and its importance in each installation. As shown in the example above, the results can be devastating. And when equipment is frequently destroyed, at best the customer demands a solution to prevent it from happening again. Or you can just give up and go back to the obsolete light switches.
Through training, installers and system integrators can learn how to identify parts vulnerable to lightning, eliminate them, and provide much better facilities for their customers. The best way to educate distributors is to remind them to take a preventative approach. It is similar to the work of a firefighter. Why invest time and resources putting out fires, when you can, from the beginning, prevent them from starting? In this case, prevention means prioritizing energy protection: always offer it with the initial quote you give to your customers and insist on the need for them to safeguard your investment.
*Greg Larson is an account manager for Latin America for Panamax and Furman. To contact you, you can write to [email protected].
