Protecting your devices from power surges and 'light off' days

It is a Sunday evening in Dansoman. The rice is on, the television is showing the match, and the lights go. The whole street goes quiet except for a generator two houses down. Forty minutes later there is a click, a flicker, a hum, and then a bang from the corner of the room. The TV comes back. The decoder does not.

Most people in Ghana know this story, or one like it. What surprises many is that the damage usually happens when the power returns, not when it goes.

Why the return is the dangerous part

When power is restored to an area, thousands of fridges, freezers, air conditioners and pumps all try to start at once. The voltage can spike, dip and wobble for several seconds before it settles. Loose connections and overloaded transformers make it worse. Electronics with delicate power circuits, such as decoders, routers, TVs and consoles, take the hit.

Early 2025 has brought outages in parts of the country, including Accra and Kumasi. Officials have attributed them mainly to faults and overloading in the distribution network rather than a shortage of generation, and there has been no published load-shedding timetable. For your devices, the cause matters less than the pattern: unplanned cuts, and rough restorations.

Three different tools, three different jobs

People often use "surge protector", "stabiliser" and "UPS" as if they meant the same thing. They do not.

Surge protector

A surge protector absorbs short, sharp voltage spikes and sends them away from your equipment. A good one is the minimum for anything with a screen or a circuit board. It will not help with low voltage or with a cut. Look for a rating in joules (higher is better), an indicator light that shows protection is still active, and a recognised brand. A cheap extension board with no protection circuit is only an extension board.

Surge protectors wear out. Each big spike uses up some of their capacity. If yours has taken a few hard hits, replace it.

Voltage stabiliser (AVR)

A stabiliser, or automatic voltage regulator, corrects voltage that is too high or too low for longer periods. It is the right tool for fridges, freezers and air conditioners in areas where the voltage sags in the evening. Many include a delay, holding power off for a minute or more after restoration so the supply can settle first. That delay alone saves a lot of compressors.

UPS

An uninterruptible power supply contains a battery. When the power goes, it switches over in a fraction of a second, so your equipment does not notice. Most also include surge protection and basic regulation. A UPS is not for running a house; it is for keeping small, important things alive for a while, or long enough to shut them down properly.

What to plug into what

• Router, Starlink, modem: a small UPS. These draw little power, so even a modest unit can keep your internet up through a short cut. A Starlink Standard kit typically draws somewhere around 75 to 100 watts in use, much less than most people guess, so size the UPS to that and add the router if it is separate.
• Desktop computer, gaming console: a UPS, so they can shut down cleanly instead of losing power mid-save.
• TV, decoder, sound bar: a good surge protector.
• Fridge, freezer, air conditioner: a stabiliser with a restart delay.
• Laptops: the laptop's own battery acts as a UPS. Plug the charger into a surge protector and you are covered.
• Phones and tablets: charge through a decent charger on a protected socket. An unbranded charger is the weak link here, not the grid.

When the lights go

• Switch off and unplug anything expensive that is not on a UPS, particularly the TV and the console.
• Leave one light switched on, so you know when power returns.
• When it does, wait a few minutes before plugging things back in.
• If you hear buzzing, see flickering, or the voltage is clearly wrong (lights very dim or very bright), keep things unplugged and call ECG.

Power banks, inverters and solar

A power bank is the simplest backup for phones. Keep one charged, but keep it out of the sun: batteries dislike heat as much as phones do. Apple's own guidance is to avoid ambient temperatures above 35 °C.

For longer cuts, many households now use an inverter with batteries, sometimes fed by solar panels. These can carry a whole living room. Two points worth knowing. First, cheaper inverters produce a "modified sine wave", which some electronics dislike; a "pure sine wave" inverter is kinder to laptops, TVs and chargers. Second, the change-over between grid and inverter can itself cause a surge, so surge protection still matters downstream.

Have any inverter or solar system installed by a qualified electrician, with proper earthing. A good earth makes every surge protector in the house work better.

A good charger helps

A reliable charger with its own protection circuits is a small but real layer of defence. If you are replacing a pile of old adapters, the Anker Prime 100W charges a laptop and a phone together from one socket.

Manufacturer warranties often exclude damage from electrical surges, so prevention is the only real protection. Put the router on a small UPS first; it is the cheapest way to make light off feel a little less like light off.