Why with the expected high tech nuclear power stations of France can they not keep the power on? Have a bit of a storm and the power goes off but not straight off, no they surge the power off and on a sufficient number of times to end the life of some technology early. At least going off grid with your own batteries could see an end to this dilema. Now I will have to return another piece of kit back to the factory for repair!
who is “they”… ???
We used to have power coming and going… during storms and even “off” for hours/days if conditions brought down the pylons/whatever…
but with more cables underground there’s less of this nowadays… 
They could be EDF or Enerdis who knows as they seek to distance themselves from anything to do with responsibilty.
Ah… you mean “it’s a plot” ??? 
have you thought of fitting surge protectors… OH did that for our computers I think… and we get warnings from our Insurers to unplug stuff in stormy weather…
it must be infuriating to have stuff broken/wrecked…
This piece of kit is on a surge protector, a French one that clearly didnt
is there any guarantee… I’d be hotfooting it to the shop…
Because handling the sudden introduction of millions of volts and tens of thousands of amps (albeit for a short duration) remains a difficult (and random) technical challenge to solve?
Ah, I parsed that wrong first time.
What was the kit?
Which “surge arrestor” was it protected by?
Most things sold as surge arrestors are metal oxide varistors, they have multiple ways of not working.
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Cant remember what bit of kit it was but from memory from Leroy Merlin. If anyone has suggestions for ones that actually work, I would be grateful as sending back equipment is hard due again to Brexit as couriers want to charge vat even where they shouldnt as its being returned for repair and not a purchase.
Really the only surge arrestor which is guaranteed to “work” is a dual conversion UPS or “power conditioner” which works on a similar principle.
A bit down the pecking order would be an “online” UPS or professional line conditioner.
The things you buy from LM or the other Brico’s are close to useless.
Typically they just have a MOV across the mains - a MOV is a semiconductor device which is high resistance until some voltage threshold is exceeded at which point they conduct. In doing so they clamp the mains voltage to a low level and dissipate quite a bit of energy which they manage by burning a little bit of themselves out. They are designed that this “self heals” and doesn’t permanently short out the device.
So, if you have a lot of surges and spikes they gradually “wear out”, in doing so they sometimes don’t self heal and they can overheat and become a fire hazard.
Or, the threshold is too high - which prevents much of the eventual wearing out - but leaves equipment damaging voltage coming through.
If they are a bit more upmarket they might include an NTC device which prevents current surges by being high resistance until they warm up - but that doesn’t do anything for voltage spikes.
Some might have a capacitor or two as well.
The professional ones tend to use a combination of MOVs NTCs common mode chokes and/or inductors, transformers and capacitors to try to filter out as much rubbish as possible.
The dual conversion ones step the mains down to DC (with lots of filtering and power factor correction) and then step it back up to 240V - they will probable protect against anything but a direct strike on your low voltage (by which I mean 230/400V) distribution cabling.
I think the dual conversion ones were what we used in our test room equipment years ago. I left the company and left half a dozen of them under my desk 
yes the one I have now looks like a capacitor and inductor in line.
So possibly not completely bargain basement then.
Having just looked at the cost of a 5KVA UPS, they’re not a bargain price unless your surname is Gates, Bezos or Musk.
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No they are not cheap and anything with a decent hold time will be even less cheap - the “prosumer” ones usually just give you enough for a clean shutdown and that’s about it.
For “not completely bargain basement” surge arrestor I’m thinking about something that will look a bit like this:
In fact that’s the typical input filter that you should be seeing on digital equipment anyway, pretty much anything with a switched mode PSU will (or should) have a similar circuit.
Edit: some upmarket ones will have more active electronics to monitor the line and disconnect equipment if it looks too dodgy.
As to UPS’s there are (at least) three types:
The cheapest just connect mains in to mains out when in normal operation (perhaps with a bit of filtering) and monitor the voltage. If it drops out of spec (either under or over) for more time than whatever their design specification says they switch to AC generated from the internal battery. Their DC->AC conversion might be a nice sine wave but there again it probably isn’t. Usually their hold times at full output are a couple of minutes at best, they are typically nice and light though because they do not have heavy transformers (and piddly batteries).
Then there are “online” types - these put the input mains through a transformer. The output side will have a couple of taps and by switching from one to the other the UPS can compensate for low or high line voltage without switching to the battery, if it goes too much under or over they will switch to generated AC. The waveform will probably be a bit more of a decent sine wave as they are not quite as “designed down to a price point” as the really cheap ones and sometimes it might be possible to add supplementary batteries. They are extremely heavy because they have both heavy batteries and a large 1:1 mains transformer but that transformer does help block more of the transients and surges.
The expensive ones are the dual conversion which always produce “synthetic” mains. Because they have a filtered DC bus in the middle they should block pretty much all the crap and the output will be a perfect since wave - big ones, however, are the sort of money that would even make Messrs Gates, Bezos and Musk blink.
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When is 5KVA not 5KVA, when its a UPS. As Billy said a couple of minutes so a safe shutdown can be actioned. Seems people just accept an amp/hour rating for a UPS even when its a fraction of what an amp per hour would be.
I bought a couple of mid priced ones and added much larger batteries to extend their run times, it was for our two way radios as we discovered when we had a power outage all the radios went down as well.
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Looks like its taken out my router as well.
Dont have the same problem in the UK, being on a very high point we do get a lot of lightning strikes but not the equipment failures. So what is the difference in how the two countries run I wonder?
I blame the red wine and garlic
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I’m not sure one can “blame” the running of France on the failure of Orange liveboxes? Or maybe we can? Liveboxes - cheap and cheerful, fail easily. I think we are on our fourth or fifth.
Do you have a standard router Corona? Or something fancy / more robust?
Its a SIM card router Sue, it looks as though the sim card no longer works either. I put the sim card into a sparr phone and my main phone and it does not give me internet access any more. Tried all sorts of setting tweeks bu nothing, it shows maybe 1 or 2 little bars on the reception graphic but there is no mobile data working.
Is it possible that the SIM card is also broken? Wonder if I can get it replaced at Leclercs?
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