Now, in the event of power surges, I can shut the power to anything that I feel will be damaged
Last night I got very nervous when the power kept going off and then coming back on a few minutes later. The sun had been out all day, there was no sign of incoming storms, and the winds were calm. I couldn’t think of anything that would cause the power to be an issue. Nevertheless, this happened several times within the span of an hour. Finally, on the fourth time, it went out and stayed out. During the on and off times I had unplugged the computer for fear it would be damaged by power surges. It was then that I realized that we had no way to turn off the furnace. I turned the thermostat down but the unit itself did not really have an on and off switch that I knew of. It is a fairly new unit and I knew it had a programmable component that allowed wireless diagnostics and worried that this may be damages too by the power problems. The power remained out for the next few hours and when it was finally restored I went right away to check on the status of the furnace. I had my wife turn on up the thermostat once I was in the basement to make sure it came on like it should. Thankfully it did! I then took turns shutting off one breaker at a time to label the electrical panel. Now, in the event of power surges, I can shut the power to anything that I feel will be damaged. Many of the appliances that we own today have some sort of, “brain”, or computerized components. It is important to remember this because a sudden surge in electrical energy can fry those, “brains”, and cost you a lot of money to repair them.