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Tesla increased their prices:

https://electrek.co/2018/10/12/tesla-powerwall-price-increase/

Powerwall went from $5,900 to $6,700
Supporting hardware went from $700 to $1,100

There is a huge demand for them. I drove the whole project to completion, it took about six months to get through the site survey, find a place in the house for it, get permits, get a date with Tesla, etc. Tesla wanted to put the battery in the driveway. Sure, it's rated for outdoor use, but I was not putting a battery in the driveway so that somebody could drive into it. The battery cannot be in a living space, and since the basement was finished, we needed to think creatively, but we found a place for it.

I did not give up and I'm glad I didn't, it gives me peace of mind knowing my mom is not in a cold, dark house after a winter storm hits. When my father was alive, he'd drag out a WWII generator and power the furnace. He was old school, there is nobody around to do that anymore for my mom and it is a pain to find gas for a generator, so I solved the problem new school.

I can't do something like this in an apartment in New York City.

My amp seller friend will give me a much better deal on the Niagara 5000 than $4k. He's a good guy, the best. He helps non-technical people with their systems.

Well that was a fancy light show indeed.
Sucks that it hurt your gear but yeah: unplugging is the only way to be safe from sth like that.

Here is what I suggested but in a commercial product. $1700. Hours of isolated AC power for your system.

https://www.rackmountsolutions.net/3000va-2880w-120v-tower-ups/

Not a bad idea, but the Niagara has twelve outlets versus only nine on this unit. I'll probably go with the Niagara because it has been pre-screened by my electrical engineer friend.

Power re-generation... PS Audio makes a few models... they regenerate a perfect AC sine wave.

https://www.psaudio.com/product-category/ac-regenerators/

What makes these products "worth it" depends on your power you have. Having lived in Center City Philly with strange hum and drifting voltage... I like these. But they are expensive. I use an inexpensive filtration and voltage regulator by TrippLite.... I have three in my home, one for my home theater, one for my main stereo, and one for all my network electronics such as my NAS router etc.

https://www.tripplite.com/2400w-120v-power-conditioner-automatic-voltage-regulation-avr-ac-surge-protection-6-outlets~LC2400

Data centers typically sell off these units.... just keep checking ebay... they don't wear out.

They work.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

Hello Bruce,

Thanks for the tips. My audio guru mentioned a PS Audio P10 but said he has to sell it and that he wouldn't recommend it to use with my big Gryphon power amp. Like I mentioned, he's running a pair of Gryphon Mephisto mono blocks, each one can put out 200w of Class A power, and each one is on its own Niagara 5000. He thinks he can run his system on two of the Niagaras instead of three. It's always nice to find someone who is running higher end gear by the same manufacturer. I use a bunch of TrippLite strips for my computers but not that higher end model.

I'll have to figure out a path forward. I need to at least try to keep the same thing from happening again.

With New York being such a crowded place, I wouldn't be surprised if cleaning up my power improves my sound dramatically.

Any half decent device should have internal filters for that.

take the RME Adi-2 DAC for instance, it has multiple stages of filtering.

I will see if I hear any differences once I get it. My friend said the noise reduction was significant and he measured it with a Entech powerline noise analyzer and an AlphaLabs Line EMI meter.

The main advantage of the Niagara 5000 is the monitoring for overvoltage, something that could have saved me.

My biggest issue in Center City Philly was voltage sags.... they were causing my VTL monoblocks to go into oscillation... scared the crap out of me. I could not figure out what was causing it. VTL said to send the units back.... I finally called Conrad Johnson (I was using one of their preamps)... the engineer laughed and said their amps don;t do that... he knew exactly what that was... voltage sags. So next time it happened, I shoved my multimeter into the wall socket and saw 95 volts.

Ok, so that was sags... what about surges? That was all I needed to see.

There is a ton more to that story... called PECO many times... they opened a ticket... said three different times they were sending someone out to put a tape recorder on my wall socket... never did.... called back, someone closed the ticket as solved. Screw them. I suspect they didn't want to fix their infrastructure for some audio nerd.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

That’s ridiculous. Audio nerds don’t get any respect. Sigh, I’m throwing down for the Niagara 5000, used or new.

Yikes.. you guys have 115 as standard, right?

I can imagine instability like that causing problems, aye.

It's even worse for appliances with large motors.

The standard in the US is 120 volts.

Wherever I lived in the past 20 years, I always re-wired the electrical system in my home... I do the work myself. I install a new 20 amp breaker and run thick 10 guage wire to a "hospital grade" quad outlet. The circuit is dedicated in that it only has that one quad outlet. If your board has the capability for isolation grounding, I use 10 guage, 4 conductor cable and use isolation ground wiring and outlet. This all helps with noise from appliances and other sources. I run a few of these in my current home... One to my home theater, one to my piano music rig, one to my home computer/office setup, one to my main stereo. THen I stick a TripLite unit on the end (need to get another trip lite for my piano rig).

If you do the work yourself, it is pretty darn cheap to do this and it always helps with sound.... but again, mostly the improvement is dependent on how noisy or bad your lines are to begin with. I just do it prophylacticly as it is cheap and fun project.

Besides sonic benefit, you get protection for your equipment. While I admit, I can't tell you if I even am getting a sonic benefit because I just install this stuff regardless of a known problem anymore. I feel it is something everyone should do if they have expensive electronics plugged in such as your home theater. A dedicated line with a TrippLite filter with voltage regulation.... good stuff now matter your feelings about us audio nerds.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

Good for you. After we bought this apartment last year, I discovered that the electrical panel was from the 1950s was made by Pacific General, and was considered a fire hazard. There was no way I was plugging my big Gryphon into that thing. I’m not allowed to do my own electrical work, so I hired an electrician to put in a new panel and install two dedicated 20amp circuits with hospital grade outlets for the audio rig.

My audio guru friend suggested that I run a ground to a water pipe in the kitchen but the electrician measured and the panel/conduit ground was better than the pipe ground. I was lucky in a way because my apartment had new wire run to the panel run through the chase because of a fire in an apartment on another floor which damaged the wiring not that long ago.

My friend runs 4AWG for all his power and says he can hear a difference between that and smaller gauges! I bought one of those Entek noise analyzers. Yes, power supplies have filtering but I want voltage protection, of course.

Good that you did that work... for lots of reasons that you clearly get. I have a slightly differing opinion on running audio stuff through two different circuits... you could introduce a ground loop between the two circuits. A 20 amp circuit has a huge capability to run audio equipment, even monster amps. You don't need two 20 amp circuits. That is why I run all of my audio gear, for one system, to only one circuit and wall plate. There is a false belief that you don't want to "stress" one circuit. This is wrong in my book. To test this out, put a multi meter between the ground pins of each of your circuits... you should see zero flow... if you do, then that is noise and bad.

Where my keyboard is located, I have the dedicated cicuit, and a "house" socket next to it. I plugged in my amp into one, and my keyboard in the other.... hum..... bad. I then put a power strip into the dedicated and then plugged all into that... no hum. Long story but I screwed up... I have a bunch of stuff at my keyboard... lights, computer power etc.... and all of it grounds everything together via usb cables et al. Bad. I need to put a TrippLite in there instead of a power strip... one of my many to dos.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

I understand circuit breakers not tripping and the risk of fire. Most people in the building probably do not understand that.

My amplifier pulls a huge amount of current from the wall, and should not be limited. Source components usually pull a fixed voltage, and usually a small amount. As someone pointed out, to their horror, my amp consumes 500w at idle. I don’t idle, so no worries. :-)

The Niagara has four outlets for high current devices, banks a lot of current, and eight others, so I’ll be moving to one 20a circuit. We checked the two circuits when I had them installed and they were good.

Just for clarification.... a 20 amp circuit can deliver 2400 watts at 120 volts. A simple Ohms law calculation. Watts are additive so you can calculate your need. As a general rule, you don't want to load a circuit beyond 80% of capability so that brings a 20 amp to 1,920 watts. A 15 amp circuit can deliver 1800 watts, and at 80%, 1,440 watts.

Check your specs on each of your equipment... they will show peak watt draw... then add them up. BTW, the peak draw spec on a piece of equipment is way way conservative... it usually only draws this at cold power up and why having a TrippLite or other voltage regulator can really prevent "surging" during power up as capacitors charge. It is this surging and bad power from the pole that leads to equipment failure over time... and another reason why leaving your equipment on all the time actually extends its life (except with tube equipment).

Oh, and never plug in flourescent lights into an audio cuircuit... they introduce 60 hz hum..... 60 hz BTW, is almost exactly B flat... a nice way to tune your guitar with out a tuner... just listen to the hum... tune to b flat.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

The specs on the Gryphon Colosseum stereo amplifier say a maximum power consumption of 2600 watts. Haha.

I’ll have to look up the numbers on the other components.

I don’t believe I have a fluorescent light in the whole apartment.