£2000 mains conditioning unit fails to protect electrical equipment.

Not however scientifically educated I suspect. It really does make a difference to how you see the world. An artistic or classical education does not prepare you for turning screws the right way, changing tyres or not being over-charged by the man who unblocks your sink.  It also does not seem to prepare people for spotting con-artists generally.

The description is that of a ferrite ring choke and sockets with sprung contacts I'd hope there are some X and Y capacitors either.

Ferrite ring choke cores are not that expensive if they hand wind the mains lead through them, and actually ready wound ones exist that you can solder to and are what we use inside apparatus for such things.

Of the £2 grand, a mere £1,950 of it should be profit !! 

This is  far more reasonable, and has a little window to show off the wiring inside..

example of a good one from amazon.

Mike.

If you go to the extreme, which I have seen done, and run a distribution circuit from the meter cabinet to a consumer unit immediately adjacent to the audio equipment then have very short socket circuit the PSCC will go through the roof at the socket, but all the general rules for installing surge protection in domestic installations go out of the window.

One of the selling points of the equipment the guy bought is that it has oversized conductors, but surely that creates rather than resolves issues?

Remember you have only one side of the story - an annoyed customer who has some appliances which have failed. This has also probably been embellished by the press report, and the supplier of the SPD, which clearly  did not do its job (if indeed there was anything amiss with the incoming DNO supply). That the repairs were “botched” is purely the opinion of the customer, who is trying to get someone else to pay for the repairs. 

Would an updated €300 consumer unit with a built in SPD have prevented such damage occuring?

Not necessarily. There is no evidence here of what caused the damage. There is no evidence that it came in on the mains, it could be as simple as a failure after the equipment was left on fr many years, the failed when it was powered down. Often with stories like this, they get embellished to make them sell more papers and what little fact there was in the original story vanishes. 

Regards,

Alan. 

Wise words from Alan (and others) methinks.

I once met a fellah who was convinced that his small domestic mains conditioner had paid for itself many times over in the electric bills over the ten years he had it.

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story

Alan Capon: 
 

Not necessarily. There is no evidence here of what caused the damage. There is no evidence that it came in on the mains, it could be as simple as a failure after the equipment was left on fr many years, the failed when it was powered down. Often with stories like this, they get embellished to make them sell more papers and what little fact there was in the original story vanishes. 

Regards,

Alan. 

Thanks for the reply Alan.

 I do wonder if an electrician had supplied and installed an SPD, sold on the premise of offering protection to the installation and connected equipment the owner might be persuing the electrician for the damages. 

to protect against an out of spec voltage that persists for longer than an SPD would handle, the correct thing to install is actually an under/over voltage lockout . Such things are not common in the UK, but do appear in places where the supply is more ‘flakey’ . It probably won't protect the SPD of course.

Mike.