FAQ

Why Is A Protected And Filtered Ground Important?

During a surge event, all the wires bundled in a cord-set or in conduit are so close together that the magnetic field generated by a surge on one wire emanates to the adjacent wires. This is called inductive coupling and is the principle that makes radio broadcasting possible. Without filtering and protection on all 3 wires, components are vulnerable to surge energy traveling on ground as well as the other wires. 

I Need To Run A Dedicated Isolated Ground To My Server, Can I Use A Bantam Product That Filters And Protects The Ground Instead?

Yes.  Isolated or dedicated grounds are most often installed as a direct path to earth ground via a wire that ensures the ground is not contaminated by other devices connected to the home or business wiring.  Since computers and servers use the ground as a zero voltage reference, not having energy pollution in the form of spikes and transients on ground is important.  The patented Bantam circuit filters all three wires, Line, Neutral, and Ground, so that unwanted energy on any of the three wires, from any power pollution source, are filtered.  Plugging your computer or server into a Bantam will provide a pollution free ground, and is much less expensive than having an electrician install an isolated ground wire and conduit back to the electrical panel and earth ground.

Bantam Products Can Stop A Gizzilion Volts From A Lightning Strike, But The Product Has A 3 To 15 Amp Circuit Breaker. Why Doesn't A Circuit Breaker Stop A Surge?

The circuit breaker is a temperature-sensitive device and will break the circuit when it reaches a fixed temperature during prolonged energy use. If you have too many devices plugged into a surge protector or power strip, the prolonged power draw will heat up the circuit and trip the breaker.  A powerful energy surge like a lightening strike is a very fast event, millionths of a second.  A circuit breaker reacts in thousands of a second, so the faster surge is past the circuit breaker before it can react.  This is why a lightening strike can get past your electrical panel circuit breakers and individual device circuit breakers to damage your sensitive electronics.

Is It Possible For Hackers To Extract Data From IT Equipment By Capturing Data Present In The Power Lines?

Yes, this is a relatively new but growing bad actor threat called a Power Line Exploit or PLE. An IEEE paper in published December 2019 confirmed PLE exists, and is a real threat to IT security. The transistor switching pulses and the power supply switching pulses generated by IT equipment create signals that emanate from power traces to the ground trace and wire via inductive coupling or inducement, the principle behind ratio transmission. Power Line Exploit is sensing and interpreting these electrical magnetic impulses, that are very low in power and very high in frequency, on the ground wire exiting IT equipment. The patented Bantam technology is a bi-directional filter of Line, Neutral and Ground and is demonstrably effective at eliminating the PLE threat. 

Is A Bantam Product Either A Power Conditioner Or A Surge Protector?

It is both Power Conditioner and Surge Protector.  Power conditioning is the broadest term used to describe how “dirty power” is cleaned up.  Dirty power is unwanted energy levels at various frequencies that pollute the pure line power supplied by the local utility company.  Several versions of power pollution can co-exist at the same time on the power line feeding your device.  Flicker, noise, hum, transients, EMI/RFI, spikes, harmonics and surges are all names for unwanted energies at different frequencies that pollute the power.  A surge from a lightening strike is a very high energy, very high frequency version of a flicker or spike.   The patented Bantam circuit is an energy-shaping technology that absorbs and re-conditions power pollution at critical frequencies regardless of the energy level.  The same circuit removes  flicker, noise, hum, transients, EMI/RFI, spikes, harmonics and powerful surges, and is both a power conditioner and a surge protector.

What Is Surge Residual?

An electrical power surge is one of the most damaging forms of power pollution and surge protectors are designed to protect your device from harmful surge energy.  Surges are very quick events and some portion of the damaging surge energy gets past the surge protector to your device.  Surge Residual is the amount of energy that is not stopped and gets past the surge protector to your device; the lower the Surge Residual, the better the protection.

Most surge protectors don’t use Surge Residual to characterize their effectiveness, but use Joules instead.  This is misleading.  Joules is a measure of how much energy the surge protector can tolerate before the surge protector itself fails, not a measure of how much surge gets through to the protected device.  The Bantam has a Surge Residual rating of less than 1%. The average consumer surge protector lets between 10% to 20% surge energy pass to the (sort-of) protected device.

The Bantam has a Joules rating of over 100,000, because it will tolerate thousands of high energy surges for over 20 years, all the while blocking over 99% of harmful surge energy.  This is how to measure surge protection.

A Bantam Product Can Be More Expensive Than A MOV-Based Surge Protector. Is The Bantam A Good Investment?

It is a good investment for the computer where you store your family photo files, but not for your coffee maker.  Bantam is a good investment for your home entertainment center, but not for your blue tooth speaker charger.  It is for your home office professional video editing system, but not your $100 printer.  Bantam is a good investment for your professional product design and CAD system, but not your screw driver battery charger.  You should replace a typical consumer grade surge protectors every 2 years; four inexpensive replacements will last 8 years.  A single Bantam will last more than 20 years.

Aren't All Surge Protectors With A UL Listing Equally Effective?

Underwriters Laboratories (UL) maintains safety standards designed to give the consumer confidence that a device (coffee maker, toaster, computer, printer, surge protector) will not electrocute anyone, or start the curtains on fire.  UL does not rate the effectiveness of any device it tests, so for surge protectors, UL is not testing how effective the surge protector is a stopping surge, only that it is safe to use.

How Does Bantam Tech Affect EMI/RFI Or Reduce Harmonic Attenuation?

Since the Bantam is a wave-shaping and conditioning technology, it is fundamentally a power conditioner. Harmful or unwanted frequencies are impeded, absorbed and filtered in the inductors’ magnetic fields. All nature of harmonics, interference, noise, and transients are all filtered to various degrees depending on their frequency.  Bantam technology will provide 20dB of EMI/RFI attenuation between 1 and 20 Mhz. 18dB of common mode attenuation below 10 Khz and 25dB differential attenuation up to 30 Mhz.  No consumer grade surge protector can do this.

Do All Power Pollution, Spikes And Surges Originate Outside The Home Or Business Wiring?

No.  In fact more than 75% of power pollution in the form of spikes, transients, surges, hum, EMI/RFI, noise, and harmonics are created by the computers, motors, compressors and electronics that share a common power circuit.  The power supplies in computers are a source of harmonics, while refrigerator compressors or spa pumps generate spikes and transients. Every electronic cable or cord acts like an antenna, capturing any nearby wireless signal and carrying that unwanted interference to your device.

How Is The Bantam Technology Different From The Usual Electronics Super Store Surge Protectors?

Inexpensive consumer grade “surge protector” strips use the least amount of technology and parts possible to meet a price point that will be attractive to non-discerning or unknowing consumers.  Consumer based surge protector use MOVs (Metal Oxide Varistors) to divert destructive energy from one power path to another, usually to the ground wire.  Think of this as a valve diverting polluted flood water down the storm drain.  Bantam technology uses a revolutionary patented circuit with inductors that behave like a reservoir, instantly capturing and storing the energy, to be released as pure clean power.

My Surge Protector Has A Joules Rating Of 1800. What Is The Joules Rating Of Bantam Products?

Joules is not a measure of surge effectiveness, it is a measure of how much surge energy a surge protector can tolerate before the MOV technology, and the surge protector, fails.  Joules is not a measure of how much surge gets past the MOVs prior to (and after) failure.  The manufacturers of a typical consumer grade surge protector just add more MOVs to increase the Joule rating, but that does not change the inherent limitations of MOV technology. We rate the Bantam Technology at 100,000 Joules because consumers expect a number, but in reality the Bantam technology will tolerate any Joules level.

My Surge Protector Has A Clamping Voltage Of 360 Volts. What Is Bantam's Clamping Voltage?

Clamp voltage is a measure of when a MOV based surge technology will react in the presence of elevated voltage.  For example, in the standard 120 Volt circuit, a clamp voltage of 360 volts means the MOV will start reacting at 360 volts, so at least 240 additional volts have gone into the (supposedly) protected electronics before the MOV starts to react.  In addition, MOVs react in milliseconds, however surges are 1,000 times faster microsecond events. Once activated at 360 volts, MOVs then oscillate very rapidly between clamped and unclamped (in milliseconds) until the voltage drops below 360 permanently.  Microsecond surge energy is getting through before and during MOV oscillation.   All the while, the MOVs are wearing out. 

What Does It Mean To Claim "Bantam Is Bi-Directional?"

Computers or electronics plugged into a home or business wall plug are sharing the power provided by that local circuit. They are also sharing the power pollution generated by all electronic devices sharing the common power wiring.  The power supplies in computers are a source of harmonics, while refrigerator compressors, spa pumps and garage door openers generate spikes and transients.  Every electronic cable or cord acts like an antenna, capturing any nearby broadcast or wireless signal and carrying that unwanted interference to your device. Over 75% of power pollution originates inside the home or business wiring.

Bantam’s patented technology filters all three wires, Line, Neutral, and Ground, in both directions.  This unique bi-directional filtering keeps power pollution from entering your device, but also filters pollution generated from a device from getting into the common power circuit.

Bantam Technology by Digilant.net