Transients caused by lightning and the electrical grid interacting was a horrible problem when I lived in Tampa (2004-early '06) . I suspect it was an issue with the problem Kelby had with his Drobo units. An electrical engineer in my old neighborhood recommended getting much heavier duty non-consumer grade UPS/surge protectors and I've stuck with that policy since then
Basically I want enough capacity for everything to power down gracefully.
I went with a 1300 watt APC UPS /surge protector this afternoon.
Tampa literally means "light stick" ---a native American moniker. I live 35 miles east of Tampa, in Polk County. My house is on a man-made hill as the county was at one time the largest phosphate mining site in the world. After the phosphate was separated form the sandy dirt, the dirt was piled and compacted to make a big hill. Orange groves flourished for about 60 years after the phosphate was mined. Then the groves gave way to housing developments. At 140 feet above sea level our home is located on one of the highest places in the county. I'm not worried about rising sea levels. But I will attest that the lightning situation in this part of the hemisphere is beyond horrible. During the rainy season, 5 months out of the year, there is a thunder storm virtually every day. Our property (2/3 acre) gets at least one lightning hit a season. In 2009, a lighting bolt touched ground about four feet from our house. Our neighbors saw the flash and heard the boom. The lightning made contact with the TV coax cable buried a few inches below the surface of the ground. The cable leads into our our house. Once the plasma entered through the cable into our house, it traversed the entire the length until it reached ground outside. I wasn't home, but my wife and dog were. Our 45 pound dog jumped into my wife's arms My wife's hair and the dog's fur stood on end. They felt the plasma coursing through the house. I pulled into the driveway only moments after the strike. I walked into the house and just about every electronic device, appliances, radio, whatever either got fried or half-fried. Buzzers buzzing, alarms going off, the TV turned itself on with volume full blast, and all of the UPS backups were chirping away. Eerie. In my office, I lost both printers--a 24" and a 44" Epson. My production computer, laptop, scanner, etc, all plugged into UPS backups, got toasted. Some devices such as external hard drives that were not even plugged into an outlet got messed up. The power cords lying on the floor acted as antennae and picked up the plasma. All told, between the office and the residential damage, the damage came up to $35,000. My business insurance reimbursed me for equipment and data recovery. Our homeowner's policy did not reimburse us for household items. We were shy of the deductible. Interestingly, we've replaced every kitchen and laundry appliance since that storm. I am convinced the lifespans of our appliances was compromised. I got an estimate for a lightning rod. It came up to around $20K (scratch that idea). So now, I've rearranged all of my equipment--desktop computer, cords, UPS backup/surge protectors, USB cables, CAT 5 cables, Phone wires, cable modem, router switch, etc. are now off of the floor. Now that I know about lighting plasma and how it travels along the ground I am fanatical---I've installed four separate UPS protectors. One for the PC, Scanner,and two monitors. Another for the modem, router/switch, and phone. My printer has a dedicated UPS (24" Epson printer only uses 80 watts), and another UPS for the NAS server. So far, so good. Oh, we've since eliminated all trees near our house--they are lightning magnets. Those "surge protectors" that the power companies sell for about $150 might help if lightning strikes a power line, but our power lines are underground. And yes, the house had one installed anyway. Nothing, and I mean nothing except a lightning rod, will prevent a direct lighting strike from damaging electronic and electrical equipment.