When Does Your Business Need a Reliable Surge Protection Upgrade?

In a fraction of a second, the voltage running through crucial systems can spike, causing irreparable damage to your process-essential equipment, crashing connected networks, and bringing your daily production goals to an immediate halt. There could be a lightning storm raging outside striking remotely connected systems, or utility disruptions from rolling brownouts causing electrical issues.

The real damage of a sudden electrical surge comes from the things you don’t see. The HVAC system that quits, the copy machine that goes on the fritz, or the addition of new industrial equipment can all degrade your entire system over time. You need proper surge protection to avoid the risk of these silent liabilities.

A comprehensive commercial electrical design establishes a strong foundation, ensuring that you won’t have to worry about occasional surges damaging systems or causing a fire. Here is the information we believe every business needs to hear.

What Is Surge Protection and Should You Care?

An electrical surge occurs whenever a sudden spike in voltage travels through your electrical system. If your outlets are rated for 120 volts and the surge runs 127 volts or higher, you’ll experience a disruption (especially without grounding).

Surges can be caused by any number of root issues, most of which are well beyond your business’s regular control, including:

• Electrical storms or lightning strikes
• Grid switching or brownouts
• Cycling on-site equipment
• Unknown faulty wiring
• Overloaded breaker panels
• Insufficient grounding on high-draw systems/equipment
• Issues with bonding design

In a typical household, these surges aren’t such a big deal. As long as the surge happens only once in a while, the worst you’ll deal with is rebooting a PC or having to restart a video game. In a business, there are many different implications. Sensitive control systems, numerous computer-based equipment, and automation systems can all be damaged by repeated or large surges. That means you end up with a lot of extra downtime that directly translates to lost revenue and poor customer service.

5 Signs Your Business 100% Needs a Surge Protection Upgrade

If you’ve never thought about surge protection before, this is a good time to dig a little deeper into your current business’s electrical infrastructure. Here are the top signs that commercial protection and design need a refresh.

#1 – Relying Too Much on Basic Power Strips

Power strips do not provide surge protection unless explicitly rated for the device. Some might have mild suppression, but those will degrade over time. A power strip is simply not designed to manage numerous surges or higher electrical loads.

If you’re installing something with a lot of draw, such as a server bank or refrigeration system, on strips alone, you are at an increased risk of surges. It’s best to conduct a commercial electrical load analysis to identify any imbalances and determine how to install new panels or breakers to reduce the risk.

#2 – Expanding with New Equipment

It is thrilling to add a new machine to operations or “go live” with A/V equipment that expands your operations. No matter if you’re onboarding production machinery or upgrading HVAC systems, your electrical load has changed, and your old surge protection may not be ready to manage that increase in demand.

Always ensure the protection matches your building’s capacity and the practical load behavior. Hiring Dreiym Engineering for an annual electrical audit helps identify issues related to voltage irregularities, even when introducing new equipment and applications.

#3 – Frequent Equipment Resets and Glitches

It can be a massive hassle to deal with Point of Sale (POS) terminals that reset randomly throughout your day. Or an LED array on display cases that flicker without any explanation as to what is causing power issues.

Signs like these are often early warnings that you are experiencing internal surges, which can likely damage your sensitive electronics. Your commercial electrical design is slightly off and needs optimization to reduce these issues and mitigate potential surge risk.

#4 – Outdated Surge Protection

A good rule of thumb is to replace any surge protection devices or buffers that are over five years old. These protections degrade over time, especially when blocking repeated spikes. The Metal Oxide Varistors (MOVs) inside such suppressors have a limited lifespan that can fail as they age without your knowledge.

You can work around this issue by having panel-mounted suppressors with diagnostic lights or early warning monitoring software. A quick electrical audit should reveal if you have any dead zones due to outdated surge protection before they become dangerous.

#5 – You’ve Never Used Surge Protection Before

Surge protection is not a sales pitch. As a leading forensic engineering firm, we frequently deal with cases involving fires that have sparked or massive damage, all of which point back to a spike in electrical surges.

If you’ve never had a fully licensed electrical engineer conduct a review of your protection systems, do it now. The cost savings alone of avoiding disruption to your operations due to a surge are more than worth scheduling an appointment. Off-the-shelf surge protection may work in the short term, but they are not rated for high commercial environments. For that, you need a qualified and experienced engineer.

What a Modern Surge Protection System Should Include

Modern businesses have a layer upon layer of equipment, electronics, and support devices that draw power from often outdated infrastructures. To meet this demand, a complex and layered design, combined with an electrical load analysis tailored to the building, is required. These systems should include:

• Service Entrance Protection: You should have a suppressor at the point where the utility power enters the building. Installing a surge protective device (SPD) intercepts risks such as lightning or grid switching, as long as it matches the service amperage and fault current levels.
• Panel-Level Suppression: A panel-mounted SPD provides tiered surge protection, preventing damage to branch circuits before it can travel further into your system.
• Point of Use Protection: Any sensitive electronics, servers, lab gear, or production automation that is essential to daily operations should have a plug-in or outlet-level suppressor as a final defense.
• System Monitoring & Alarms: You need real-time monitoring that includes diagnostics using suppressors integrated with building management or control systems. That will help avoid silent failures when capacity is reduced or compromised.
• Proper Grounding & Bonding: All surge protection needs a practical pathway to the ground. Outdated grounding will cause surge protection to fail as it redirects spikes elsewhere.

As you can see, the system needs multiple protection points, but doesn’t have to be so complex that it overwhelms your infrastructure design. Hiring an experienced electrical engineer who understands these designs goes a long way to simplifying everything.

Quick Scenario: Equipment Loss at a Medical Testing Lab

Let’s run a quick real-world scenario based on our previous work. Say you own a Houston-based diagnostic lab. Every day, you experience sudden equipment failures. Recently, these failures have increased from once per day to five times every few hours. This is causing serious issues with maintaining blood analysis machinery and temperature-controlled sample storage due to power fluctuations.

After an initial inspection by the maintenance contractor, everything was ruled “bad luck” due to some outdated building systems. However, company losses over the past month from these surges have hit the $80,000 mark, so you call Dreiym Engineering for an in-depth electrical audit.

When our licensed electrical engineers come to visit, we find:

• Outdated panel-level SPD installed a decade ago
• No service entrance protection
• Improper grounding
• Way too many power strips in offices and process essential locations

After our investigation, we provide a comprehensive forensic engineering report, which is submitted to you and can be forwarded to your insurance provider. They agree to help fund some of the upgrades, eliminating daily surges and reducing losses, so you have more reliable systems that lead directly to increased client acquisition.

We encounter these types of scenarios all the time. Businesses can benefit from a full audit. It will reduce risk, save money in the long term, and ensure greater operational resiliency, even in older buildings.

Surge Protection Is the Best Kind of Insurance

Electrical surges are not likely to make themselves known until it’s too late. Invisible damage, service interruptions, and operational downtime will all leave you scrambling to clean up the mess. Hiring a qualified, licensed, and experienced team like Dreiym Engineering ensures that you receive the proactive protection necessary to keep your business online and running smoothly. Call us today and eliminate the worry of surges interrupting your essential operations. We work with you to tailor every suppression system to your needs, insurance recommendations, and regulatory compliance