It's monsoon season here in Arizona and a few weeks ago we had a lightning strike close to our house. I don't think it hit the house - maybe a tree on the wash 75 yards or so away.
My wife's TIVO died along with the remote receiver in the fan in that room. Also dead the electronic doorbell.
My office TV lost it's video, but recovered with a power cycle.
We have a whole house surge protector which is still in the green.
Has anyone had a similar experience, have an idea on the cause, or did I just have a Yuge coincidence?

 

Not likely a coincidence.
I think you had a Yuge voltage surge from the strike that the surge protector didn't (for whatever reason) protect against.

 

Most of the damage I saw in remote comm shacks in close lightning strikes was from ground potential rise from the station ground system to a remote ground from an incoming cable (usually coax or a shielded twisted communications cable) Cable TV lines without a proper outside ground block to the house grounding system are a common cause. The potential between the power lines and local ground remained reasonable usually but the current path cross the grounding system would generate a powerful EMP pulse that traveled inside via the coax ground to house ground circuit. Having lived in Texas, Florida and the tropics one of the first things I did with the new house here was to improve the grounding system with extra rods and proper bonding between those rods and the utility ground rod while making sure the whole house surge protector was bonded to that ground. I don't use cable TV so I dug up the cable on my property before it connects to the house a removed a long slice of it to make sure there were no sneak ground paths. I also disconnected the old TELCO wiring to the house as I only have cell phones for the main line and fiber for Internet.

https://electrical-engineering-portal.com/ground-potential-rise-in-your-home

 

I'm not sure what the deal is.
It's a new house in the desert so it has a Ufer ground which I think should be pretty good and all the utilities are underground.
I was thinking maybe some air conducted charge, but it doesn't sound like it.

 

I'm not sure what the deal is.
It's a new house in the desert so it has a Ufer ground which I think should be pretty good and all the utilities are underground.
I was thinking maybe some air conducted charge, but it doesn't sound like it.

Most of the damage I've seen in the past from GPR was from magnetic field induction generating local potentials as strike current followed a ground path. The e-field can be locally intense at the point of the strike but because the bolt acts like a current source the actual electrical potential between ground and objects varies with the type of object struck. The best grounding system can be defeated by a unbonded ground sneak path to a different external ground during a strike.

 

A few years back we had a lightning strike in the village. My neighbor lost vertical hold on his television set and the metal oxide varistor in the power supply for one of my USB hubs turned black and the hub died. Near-strikes do this.

 

I am a firm believer in surge suppression at the panel. Prices have gone up but still not expensive. Surge suppressor has 3 legs, BLK L1, BLK L2, WHT NEU/GND attached inside the panel. Additional surge suppressor power strips used also at the TV/Computer/etc. In the 30+ years, I have had strikes less than 50' from the house without inside damage.

 

I am a firm believer in surge suppression at the panel. Prices have gone up but still not expensive. Surge suppressor has 3 legs, BLK L1, BLK L2, WHT NEU/GND attached inside the panel. Additional surge suppressor power strips used also at the TV/Computer/etc. In the 30+ years, I have had strikes less than 50' from the house without inside damage.

I have one. That's why I curious about other causes.

 

I think surge/spike suppression should be treated as power supply noise in a high-precision system - one point never protects everything. I have a big suppressor at the house input AND Tranzorb-based clippers at every outlet with electronics. Ohio isn't Oklahoma or Florida, but we get enough hits to matter. 30 years, zero equipment losses.

Also, not all surge suppressors are created equal. Tranzorbs (ultra-fast, high-power zener diodes) really are better than MOVs.

ak

 

The newer ones have the indicators. Mine is about the diameter of a hockey puck and twice as thick. Check the connections to the panel. Make sure they are tight and not corroded. EMP can be induced both externally coming into the panel or internally from the house wiring runs. Many years ago during a downpour, I arrived at the house and put my briefcase over my head to keep the rain off my glasses. Lightning struck near but still a good distance away (maybe a half-mile) and I was zapped by the aluminum frame of my briefcase from the EMP charge built up in it from the strike.

 

The newer ones have the indicators. Mine is about the diameter of a hockey puck and twice as thick. Check the connections to the panel. Make sure they are tight and not corroded. EMP can be induced both externally coming into the panel or internally from the house wiring runs. Many years ago during a downpour, I arrived at the house and put my briefcase over my head to keep the rain off my glasses. Lightning struck near but still a good distance away (maybe a half-mile) and I was zapped by the aluminum frame of my briefcase from the EMP charge built up in it from the strike.

This sounds more like my guess as to what happened.

 

Yes for sure I've seen it, just a couple of weeks ago. The lightning has really been something special this summer, and it hit a tree in our back yard stripping the bark off of the side and blowing parts everywhere. Here's my security camera video from a camera near the tree. The camera is on the opposite side of the tree from where the damage occurred, so the bits you see flying are just the tidbits. Some very large branches exploded and bark made it onto our roof and across our back yard, some was even embedded in a nearby tree.

We have underground utilities so it definitely did not hit the power lines. I'm still finding things that got zapped in the house. Oddly even the USB hub plugged ONLY into my PC USB port, which is on a UPS, instantly stopped working. It even took out some of my equipment that was turned off with a mechanical switch (physically disconnected), and turned-on a light in my office that has a soft turn-on button. Several of my security cameras stopped working, though rebooting them fixed the issue. Also a near by GFCI outlet got zapped and no longer works.

A side note; GW brand security cameras do not like lightning. I have several of them and lightning often makes them stop working until they are rebooted. I have several cameras from other brands, powered by the same PoE switch, and they do not have the same issue.