Sounds like like the powercenter did it's job...sacrificing itself in the process....heroic, I'd get another one!
Racoon fried my Monster AC Powerstation
Last night a racoon climbed a power pole about a quarter mile behind our house and shorted the lines. Our lights dimmed, like we were running on one phase of power. The lights flickered on and off. My brother in law, Dan, and I were discussing possible causes, when the powercenter went zzzzzt, then smoked profusely. I quickly went to the breaker box and shut the power to the house off. Called the power company while Dan drove down the edge of the corn field checking the power poles, since my wife said she saw a bright flash from behind the house, the direction the lines run. Dan got about a quarter mile down, and found arcing and smoke at the top of one of the poles. The power company came, measured the power at my meter, and found 240 volts. He then drove down to where Dan found the arcing, and came back, stating there was a very cooked racoon at the base of the pole, and that it shorted the wires. He then got in the bucket and went up to the transformer that supplies power to our home, and found it fried, just like my powercenter, only it was producing a bit more juice than I needed. Said the coon supplied a power surge that did the damage. After a few hours, they put a new transformer up, and things were back to normal.
Only I'm wondering why the surge didn't trip the main breakers, (gotta get that looked at), or hurt anything else in the house. The Monster Powercenter has a built in circuit breaker on the rear that may or may not have tripped, but I think the surge may have been too great and arced across and did some major damage. The television is fine, the Pass Labs X250 plugged directly to the wall is fine, everything that was connected to the Monster is fine. All appliances are fine, the computer is fine, etc., etc.
Why did the surge only affect the Powercenter? I would have thought that if that much power could do that much damage to something with a built in breaker, it should have had a real fun time with the rest of my gear.
Only I'm wondering why the surge didn't trip the main breakers, (gotta get that looked at), or hurt anything else in the house. The Monster Powercenter has a built in circuit breaker on the rear that may or may not have tripped, but I think the surge may have been too great and arced across and did some major damage. The television is fine, the Pass Labs X250 plugged directly to the wall is fine, everything that was connected to the Monster is fine. All appliances are fine, the computer is fine, etc., etc.
Why did the surge only affect the Powercenter? I would have thought that if that much power could do that much damage to something with a built in breaker, it should have had a real fun time with the rest of my gear.
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