Electric Panel Surge protection

I’ve installed a Siemens First Surge at the main panel (replacing an Eaton before that),  but also use additional point of use surge protection in the house for computers, printer and TV system as well as certain appliances like the microwave oven.

My main hi-fi system is fed by a 10kVa Iso Transformer that has a surge board inside the NEMA case, which obviates the need for any point of use surge protection for the individual components. My vintage Quad Loudspeakers are plugged into a ZeroSurge--since they need to be powered up for at least 24 hours before playing (not true for later Quad stats as far as I know). 

I also have a whole house back up generator 26kVA that has its own service panel. Only the appliances wired to that secondary panel are "backed up" by the generator and that panel has a surge protector on it when normally operating from the grid. If it throws over to the generator for power due to electrical service going down, the generator has surge protection integrated into its electronics.  I used this wiring scheme in part to avoid having the automatic transfer switch (ATS) in the same circuit as the main hi-fi. I am not supporting the big hi-fi system with generator power- if we lose grid power, I’m not interested in running the hi-fi from the backup generator. 

FWIW, to answer your question whether whole house surge protection obviates the need for point of use type, the folks at ZeroSurge claim that a lot of surges are internal to your household circuitry and according to them, a whole house surge unit is not a complete solution. I’ve covered my bets by using both and on the big hi-fi, I hear no negative effects from the Iso Transformer with built-in surge board. 

a whole house surge unit is not a complete solution.

This is backed up by the  wording of the National Electric Code, as well as the fine print in the publication of most reputable whole house surge protectors.  It gets lost in translation when electricians are selling them on their websites.   They'll say "protects your whole house!" but not give you the details, making you think your PC and TV are good when they aren't.

Important to note that no surge protector guarantees survival from a catastrophic surge strike, but 99% of damaging surges are the one’s you wouldn’t know hit anyway.  In my area we get 2 power events a month, sometimes storm, sometimes unfortunate interaction of a power pole and a vehicle, sometimes just power company failures.  I don’t know when they will happen, I can’t proactively disconnect my system so I chose to use multiple layers of surge protection all the time. 

BTW,  the patents on series mode protection expired a while ago and Furman among others now incorporates them into their designs.  Looking at the only 3rd party tests I know of, from Wired, the latest Furman and Tripp Lite models outperform Brickwall and ZeroSurge and also add nice additional features. 

Not exactly directly related, but I just spent $1,000 to find out that my air handler (the thing that moves air in my vents) uses a computer controlled blower motor, which is much more vulnerable to electric surges than your old school AC motor.  It is this kind of computerization of every appliance that makes whole house units more necessary. 

Not all surges are from lightning.  I've mentioned it before, but I had a customer situation where only room-local protection was in place.  A number of system-specific UPS's gave up magic smoke when a storm-tossed tree limb dropped a 4160V line on the 120/240 V areial lines below it and fed the 4160 into a bunch of local buildings.  Odds may be lower, but the same can happen when a car takes out a pole on an otherwise quiet sunny day.  Public Utility power is usually pretty good, but is seldom perfect, even if your service drop to the house is underground like mine, and I still use both panel and in-room protection.