Power Conditioners
What is a power conditioner
A power conditioner is a device that offers extra protection for your sensitive or expensive electrical equipment or computers against power surges.
But I already have surge protectors installed? Aren’t they enough?
Surge protectors offer substantial defense against voltage spikes that can damage your electrical equipment or computers. When it comes to your electronics sustaining damage, there are more sources than just power surges.
There are:
- Voltage fluctuations
- Radio frequency interference (RFI)
- Electro-magnetic interference (EMI)
These can impact sound, entertainment and office electronics and equipment.
For example, if you have a business where you need great sound or video quality, a power conditioner would help sustain that level of ideal quality.
How does a power conditioner work?
Power conditioners essentially act as a middle-man or buffer between the outlet where your equipment is plugged into and the electrical system, ironing out any voltage fluctuations in addition to electromagnetic and radio interference.
Benefits of a power conditioner
- Equipment protection: Voltage surges can come through electrical lines, phone lines, coax and TV inputs, as well as LAN connections. Power conditioners protect against all of those helping minimize the degradation of the system performance or a complete system failure.
- Noise removal and reduction: Electrical lines running radio, TV, mobile devices, motors (such as in a vacuum or refrigerator) can generate noise. Power conditioners help reduce those.
- Fluctuation correction: Voltage and waveform distortion correction
Types of power conditioners
There are three types.
Passive-type filters: This is the most economical of the three. They shunt high frequency noise components away via a capacitor to ground. It’s a basic option for noise reduction.
Balanced transformer: Substantially more expensive than a passive-type, the balanced transformer offers significant more noise reduction and features an isolation balanced transformer, which helps to balance AC power feed. This type is optimal for noise reduction in audio and video components. Keep in mind as well that these types are much bigger and therefore need more room. One possibly downside is that they offer limited power supply due to the balancing transformer’s damping effect.
AC regenerative types: The most expensive option of the three, it is also a lot larger, requiring significant room. One downside is that these types produce a lot of heat while in operation. The upside is that they are the best option for solving the problems related to noise in the audio and video spectrum.
