Panel fried after a lightning strike 3 blocks away

Ngl, I had a Vista 20P get zapped even though it was grounded proper during a storm last Wednesday in Austin. Anyone else seeing boards die from indirect hits like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

charliehill21h ago

Yeah I read somewhere that lightning doesn't actually have to hit your house to fry gear. The EMP from the strike can travel through the ground and induce voltage spikes in your wiring. A guy on another forum said his panel got cooked from a strike three houses down and it wasn't even a direct hit. Grounding can only do so much when the whole neighborhood's earth potential shifts for a split second.

bettywilson19h agoMost Upvoted

Hang on, I gotta push back a little on that. I've lived in Florida for 22 years and we get lightning ALL the time here. I had a strike hit the tree in my front yard, about 30 feet from the house, and it fried my modem and one TV. But my panel was fine, and everything else in the house worked. The thing is, a lot of those horror stories about "three houses down" are from older homes with bad wiring or no whole-house surge protection. If your panel is grounded properly with a good ground rod and you have a quality surge suppressor at the main, it handles a LOT of that induced voltage. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I've seen way more cases where the damage came from a direct hit or a strike on the power line itself rather than just ground potential stuff.