The first stage in Howell-Oregon Electric's Home Surge Protection Program involves the installation of a meter base device designed to protect your appliances from damages caused by lightning and other surges that may enter your home. The damage to your appliances is caused from a power surge or "transient voltage". The power surge creates a dramatic voltage increase in the electrical lines, phone lines or even cables leading in from your TV antennas or satellite dishes. These power surges can be responsible for the failure of your major appliances. The Home Surge Protector defends your home at the electric service entrance against power surges up to 300,000 amps. This meter adapter will be installed at the base of your electric meter by a Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative representative, to protect against surges that occur outside the home. This product has been designed to provide protection from surges and lightning transients entering through the electric service entrance for standard residential appliances. Standard residential appliances shall be limited to refrigerators, stoves, washers, dryers, dishwashers, microwave ovens, and air conditioning units. As an additional protection for your home appliances the meter base device carries a $25,000 electro-mechanical warranty, in the event the unit should fail or a lightning surge more powerful than the rated protection enters your home through the electric service entrance. The meter socket surge protector is considered the very best protection and can be leased for $4.95 per month. This fee will be added to and remited with your monthly electric bill.

The second stage of Howell-Oregon's Home Surge Protection Program involves the additional use of secondary surge suppression strips inside your home to protect your sensitive electronic equipment. This sensitive electronic equipment will not be covered by installing the meter base devices. To complete the Home Surge Protection Program, secondary devices will need to be installed in your home. All secondary surge suppression strips are recommended and warranted for homes with three wire system.

Although this is the best surge protector we have found, no company can guarantee that a surge suppresser will completely protect your home from voltage surges. Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative can only honor the manufacturer's parts and workmanship warranty. Also, surge protectors will not eliminate other power quality problems such as blinks or voltage problems.

Howell-Oregon Electric Cooperative has extensive lightning protection built into its distribution system. This system prevents most power surges from destroying our equipment and from entering your home. But even with this protection, a voltage surge can reach your home or place of business through our lines or through your telephone lines and TV cable.

Some of the best in home protection for computers or other equipment that needs back-up power is the use of an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) device. These units protect against electrical outages in addition to providing an additional surge suppression and line filtering.

UPS devices or secondary surge suppression strips may be purchased from Howell-Oregon Electric to fit your home needs.