Need for Surge Protection Devices at Home

Most of us may not be aware of the surges and the impact of surges on our electronic devices.

At our home we may not have an SPD installed and most of the electricians may not know about it as well

It is often heard that the devices at home like TV, Music system, Laptop chargers or other costly devices fails frequently.

It is a fact that more than 40% of the television failure is due to the power quality, the major cause being the surge.

What is surge?
As the name indicates it is an impulse of energy of high magnitude that gets into the supply (mains). The impulse is distructive enough to damage the equipment.

How surge occur?
There are several factors that causes surge. It could be because of 1) Lightning that hits the power distribution lines 2) energy kicked in due to some heavy machines starting up 3) Capacitor banks switching 4) Electrical arcs 5) Welding and cutting machines

What is surge protection devices (SPD)?
Surge protector is nothing other than a Metal Oxide Varistors (MOV). The device helps to clamp the high.magnitude energy.
When the surge is beyond the MOV ratings, MOV fuses that results in shorting the MOVs. A fuse in breaker in series breaks / blows there by disconnecting the unit.
Another catagory of MOV is TPMOV(Thermally Protected MOV). These devices, instead of shorting the terminals, would automatically disconnect from mains when fuses due to surge. Such devices do have a visual indication or a potential free contact (mechanically driven) for detection of the failure (when fused).

SPD category?
There are two categories of SPD based on surge
1) Type 1:- For direct lightning surges. These SPD discharge / clamp the surge energy using spark gaps. Type1 SPD needs separate lightning arrestor earthing for the reliable functionality.
2) Type2 - For indirect Lightning and surges caused due to machineries.

There is another category as well which is Type1+Type2 ( combination of both).

Do we need an SPD at home?
Yes we need it badly. Surges are not predictable and could happen any time. SPD in the electrical distribution would guard the costly equipments.

SPDs are available in DIN rail mount packages which could be installed at in the distribution boxes.

Going Green - The Personal Goal - From 2018 Environment Day

05-June-2019 -  World Environment Day. 

Every Year this days silently passes away in most of our lives. The day that tells a lot which most of do not hear.
Most of us are not aware sometimes not bothered of the environmental impacts happening in the world.

In the social media we may notice many visionaries talking about the environment and how to have a greener tomorrow for the sustainable. I would like to take this opportunity to spread the awareness and importance for a Greener life.

We are in a world where all the natural resources are getting exhausted. The natural resources like air, water are getting polluted. Environment temperature is raising rapidly. If this condition continues in another couple of decades the world would turn into a furnace, where no one would be able to live.

The effect of the Carbon Dioxide(CO2) - a green house gas is one of the reason for the environment temperature rise. More than the heat we feel, we should also know that the glaciers are melting (Glaciers maintain the rivers during the summer when the ice melts). This would result in drying up of rivers. At the same time the ice at the polar region melts which would result in the rise of sea water level. This would result in land areas getting swallowed by sea. These are several other environmental impacts.

Do we know the internet browsing we do adds to the global warming?
We are all in a connected world, where we cannot think about a day without Internet & Electricity. But we should know that the luxury we enjoy is at the cost of adding to the carbon foot print.

The current statistics says that we need to cut-down in CO2 emissions by half and double the energy production to meet the demand of tomorrow. That means we should be 4 times efficient than now.

What Can We Do?
To live without electricity and Internet is now not imaginable as it became the necessities of life. People live on that. Judicious use of the natural resources would help us to sustain.

Just think, if we could generate as much as green energy, and reduce the wastage of natural resources we would be able to neutralize the carbon trail that we leave.

My Initiatives for the last 6 Months
I had decides to clean of the carbon trail that me an my family leave on the environment. For this
1) Design for Energy Efficiency:- The key thought process was to attain energy efficiency. For this following measures were implemented
1) All LED - High efficient lighting deployed
2) FAN - BLDC fan that is thrice efficient than the regular fans.
3) Light color paints for the interiors with well positioned windows - Ensures sufficient natural lighting
4) Windows positioned to ensure proper cross ventilation:- This would reduce the need of cooling in the house. Like Fan
5) Roof with clay tiles and with heat reflective paint. To reduce the heat in the room.
6) Planted several trees around (Around 10+ trees) the 2048sq feet of land with house. Planted lot of shrubs and grass that would cool the environment around.
 Design for efficiency helped to reduce the power consumption to just above 1 kWh.

2) Installed a Solar Off Grid Solution for the Home - A 320Wp Solar panel with an MPPT charger is paired to my Home UPS system, that would help to run the entire home during the day from solar energy. The system generates approx 1.0-1.5kW a day.

Even though the generation of energy is covers the electricity consumption, still we had only reached 40% Green mark. Why? We as human exhale CO2 that adds up to the Carbon Footprint, The vehicles that we use, Internet we use, the equivalent shared foot print due to the mobile towers (to provide us the connectivity), etc. 

My next milestone is to go another 20% higher in the Green Mark by in another 6 months.

3) Home Automation:- Created DIY home automation systems, connected to opensource Automation Hub. This ensures that the lighting, water pumps, etc are monitored and managed to attain energy efficiency.

Other Green Initiatives

1) Planting Trees & having a garden to be more Green is an advantage, at the same time we need to maintain it. DIY water smart valves are being made and connected to the Home automation IoT platform which would decide how much to water the plants and trees. Various inputs such as the preferred time along with weather forecast is being used to decide the how much water to be released. The plants need for water varies from season to season, summer and flora, fruiting season needs more water, etc. These conditions are planned to be added to the rules in near future.

2) Monitoring the Gas consumption of home: -Planning to add mechanism to monitor the gas consumption and to add smart alerts

3) Vehicle Maintenance:- To ensure better efficiency, periodically maintain the vehicles and ensure that the tires have the right air pressure, brake disks / drums cleaned periodically, air intake filter cleaned, plugs cleaned, oils changed on time. 

I monitor the fuel efficiency of the car during each refill and ensure that the vehicle is performing the best. In near future planning to shift to Electric vehicles.

4) Recycling of rejected water from RO system: -The RO water purifier rejected water is recycled to washing & irrigation

5) Planning to reuse the water from kitchen and washing machine for irrigation purposes.

6) Education:- I ensured that my family including my 5 year old son understand the need of judiciously using natural resources. Educate them to switch off devices that are not in use, use water and other natural resources for the need and avoid wastage.

7) Automatic Switching of Refrigerator to Solar Power when there is surplus energy available in solar.

8) Solar Water Geyser - Gets warm / hot water without the need of electricity all the year around. I do not have even a single electric geyser at home.  

One of the achievement for me

Staying in a house at Bangalore during the summer with no Air Conditioner and very less usage of Fan seems to be a good achievement for all my efforts.

 I would like to close here with a thought:- The water we consume a day, more than 99% of the water returns back to the drain / sewage. The water that do not return back is your perspiration / sweating. 

Which means we have all the possibility to recycle 99% of the daily water use.

Lets all take the purpose of the world environment day seriously and try to reduce our carbon foot print.

Few Pics of My Home & Community

The Hybrid Model / Culture - Right mix of Startup Culture & Mature Process Oriented Culture

We are in the world of Start-ups. A world where a small group of people try to solve some problems. 

Startups:- A small group of highly focused people trying to solve / address some specific customer problems. The success rate of the startup depends on various factors. Even if the startup didn't succeed in business, they would have nearly solved some of the basic needs / problems of the customer. 

The highly focused, deterministic, risk taking attitude of the startup would help them to be aggressive and advance faster to the solution, most of the time disrupt the market / industry with the solutions.

Mature process oriented Model:- A model usually adopted by the mature organizations and multinationals. This model would be more reliable and would have less risk. These models are proven, but at the same time, ends up in lot of process overheads. 

Most of the times, the process are followed like a ritual without having a clarity on the reason for following the process.

The Hybrid Model:- The Hybrid model is the right mix of the startup model and mature process oriented model.

Why Hybrid Model:- The startup model and Mature process oriented model have its own advantage and drawbacks. 

Consider a case where a proposal to address a business gap or a new offer to market is being thought about. This should ideally start with a startup model due to the following reasons

1) Quick Proof Of Concept to validate the idea

2) Less Cost and impact

3) May help to explore new methods / techniques - out of box thinking & innovation

Where as when an offer is placed to market, or maintaining an offer the mature process oriented model would have advantages 

1) Less Risk

2) Better Reliability

3) Better plan for end to end product life cycle management

The right mix of the models would help the Organization to succeed. In the current world non organization would be able to sustain if they are only with one of the model.

Eg:- Lets consider the pioneer in photography Kodak as an example.

Kodak was one of the best in photography, with the conventional film camera. 

They didn't consider the disruption of digital photography and overlooked the technology. This resulted in Kodak loosing the market share and at the end the market itself. 

Kodak was believing only in a "Mature Process Oriented Model", the lack of startup model in them made them fail.

Eg2:- Pebble Watch was a crowd funded startup initiative for smart watches. The watch was an amazing product (Infact I own one). But unfortunately it lacked to keep the momentum and compete with the giants like Samsung, Google, Apple, etc. 

The less insights in terms of making the watch more smart and the lack of mature process oriented approach with a long term vision had resulted in the great product to drop down in demand.

What is happening to bigger organizations and multi national product companies 

The Multi national organizations 90% plus is focused on maintaining the existing offers and add some incremental innovation. The focus on disruptions (even if defined by leadership) usually dies down as the "Process" that is followed limits in disruption and exploring new mechanisms.

This results in slower pace of generating new offers. To cover this most of the Organizations try to partner with startups. To some extend this may work, but most of the times the direction of the startup vz the Multinational do not align resulting in below expectation results.

What a multinational or a bigger product company could do

Any bigger giants in the market was once a startup. There is no giant which came as a giant, it had grown as a giant. Keeping this in mind, the Organization should focus on creating a Hybrid Culture leveraging and motivating the employees to push themselves across the startup culture and the well defined process oriented culture.

Empower the employees to form small focused teams (say an internal startup), where they could focus on some of the ideas that would have a high business impact. The startup culture, would help them to gain high momentum. Even if the concept didn't fly, the team would have exponentially improved on efficiency which would help in the regular products / projects they work.

The small focused group would also help the employee to think beyond their regular boundaries which would at some time help them to incubate the disruptive idea.

The leadership team should be closely watching the team, guiding and mentoring them. 

I strongly believe that the Hybrid Culture would only help any Organizations to sustain.

Author:- Bibin Andrews