News

July 15, 2003:

TEAL Awarded Patent for Adaptive Surge Suppression Technology

TEAL Electronics Corporation (San Diego, CA) was recently awarded another patent related to our power quality product lines. U.S. Patent No. 6,535,369 B1 was awarded to Randy Redding, Victor Soto, and Rey Llanos for "Adaptive Surge Suppression", which is a surge suppression circuit with imminent failure detection and self-maintenance capability.

Surge suppression devices are typically employed on the AC power mains to help protect electronic equipment from spikes, surges, and other electrical noise transients that could disrupt or damage downstream electronic equipment. One weakness of traditional surge suppression devices is that they tend to sacrifice themselves in the act of protecting the downstream equipment, and consequently they can only protect for a limited time before they are no longer useful. It is often difficult if not impossible to tell if the surge suppression device is still active and useful.

The TEAL patented Adaptive Surge Suppression technology has a circuit topology that includes at least two surge suppression devices. Initially, only the first device is actively connected to the circuit being protected and the second (or any subsequent) device is isolated from the circuit being protected. If and when the first suppression device approaches failure, the patented circuit switches out the used suppression device and automatically activates the second suppression device. Multiple stages of backup suppression devices can be employed and easily monitored to provide a chain of surge suppression devices, each of which is not electrically connected to the circuit being protected until the device proceeding it approaches failure. This method assures that the user knows that the surge suppression device is protecting the valuable downstream electronic equipment.

TEAL Electronics is the leading provider of custom power subsystems for the technology sector, primarily serving the medical imaging and semiconductor production/testing markets. Its mission is to help customers make products that are more competitive and reliable by engineering and manufacturing innovative custom power solutions.

TEAL Electronics - We Power Technology^™

For more information, contact: TEAL Electronics, 10350 Sorrento Valley Road, San Diego, CA 92121, (858) 558-9000, Fax (858) 558-9500, www.teal.com.

Press Contacts:
TEAL Electronics Corporation
Kevin Harris, 858.558.9000, x277
kharris@teal.com