These whole house surge protectors seem tonwork by diverting the surge to ground, right? I’ve wondered about these for a while and need some clarification.
In a condo building the unit panel is a sub panel. The SPD is installed like normal with its white wire to the neutral buss. But, in a sub panel shouldn’t it be attached directly to the ground buss? I read the installation manual (Siemens QSPD series) and it vaguely mentions adding green tape if attaching it to the ground buss but gives no guidance as to when to do that.
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The instructions do say to attach it to the neutral buss. I assume that’s why the white wire. But there is that vague reference to adding green tape if attaching to ground
Some Surge Protectors are exterior panel mounted, thus when the conductors are properly routed into the panel, they are too short to reach the Neutral Bar, and land onto the Ground Bar.
Note that due to “Bonding” many electrical components may become energized and potentially hazardous, thus the preference to attach to Neutral.
The white conductor gets connected to the neutral. Also the coil is to be removed and the white conductor is to be cut as short as possible. It says both of these things in the instructions.
The grounded conductor from the surge protector should not be coiled. Coiling the wire creates a choke and could reduce the surge protector’s effectiveness.
So, what is the purpose of coiling the conductor (manufacturer) to begin with? To avoid damage to the conductor from bending it to fit into the packaging? Is this the same situation as with GFCI/AFCI breakers that are factory coiled?
