Our farm seems a target for extreme sky spark hits. Lost tens of thousands of dollars in electronic gear, freezers, refrigerators and submersible pumps over the years. Mostly covered by insurance. Once, we lost pump, fridge, freezer and 4 computers as well as all the network gear in one hit. We added a LOT of grounding and surge suppressors all over the place after that one which we got a fair % of the replacement costs for the loss from the property insurance.
Our Outback FX2524T got hammered last night along with the cordless phone system plugged into it during a violent thunder boomer. A close strike woke me about 4 AM and the first thing I noticed after all the flashing and booming like an artillery attack (BTDT) was the string of LED lights that illuminate the stairs were out. They run on the inverter 24/7 so I get up to check it out. Torrential rain and all that gear is in the garage / office / workshop across the driveway.
Get to the equipment room to find the fan running on the inverter (it never runs unless the water heater is running on it) , no lights and an inverter that was not inverting. I throw the manual transfer switches to get everything to the grid which is up in the house. Still no lights. Grab a rechargeable flashlight out of the outlet and check the panel for the building. Every breaker is tripped including the main. That is a first on me here. I reset the breakers and everything comes back on except the Outback. Shut off the DC feed and AC in to the Outback, take a mini tour to check that the other electronics are good. Freezer is running, TV, network gear, Sat receiver, etc all fine.
I have surge suppressors all over the place and enough grounding that I should be fairly well protected. Nothing diverted whatever happened. Must have been pretty wicked to pop the main and all the sub breakers most of them do not have any real loads just power tools waiting to be flipped on. They all fired up when switched on.
This should be a bump in the carpet as I know how to swap the boards and I think it is a $450 or so fee for reworked boards? Won't kill me but will hurt. We recently upped our deductible on the property insurance so even if we got a new FX and phone system we will barely hit the deductible. Certainly have to eat it on a DIY board swap.
Anyway, on the positive side, this FX failure combined with the 12 foot turbine coming down gives me some time to upgrade some stuff in the equipment room. This system has grown in place so is disorganised and built around ease of install of new gear at the expense a lean and clean install. Plus allow my batteries a few days of floating without taking the inverter offline to do that since it is bricked already.
Obligatory photos:
The gutted case:
The guts:
At the risk of looking like a whiner I wanted to share this and show when one door closes another opens.
Tom