Originally Posted by
alb
A whole-house surge protector is typically somewhat vaguely rated for 'extreme transients' or something like that. Think lightning strike nearby, transformer exploding, etc.
Used to be that gensets could be expected to have some startup surge, but recent models tend to be pretty good. Doubt it'd be something that a whole-house protector would deal with anyway, and that's even if the WHP is installed such that it'd see the genset; depends on the configuration of the transfer switch and where the WHP is located in terms of the service entrance and transfer switch anyway.
However, what I'd guess is that your equipment saw the outage, then in short order saw the genset kick in. Let's just call that intervening period unstable power, could be anything happening there, really, from a brownout condition to a surge; not possible to know unless you were there with a meter. For electronics, that's pretty much like being clubbed with a lead pipe; results are going to be unpredictable.
Since you've got the genset, what I'd recommend is a decent quality small UPS to provide surge protection and carry the gear through that unsettled period between the outage and the genset running. You want a high load rating but you don't need a lot of battery, so that should be an economical one.
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