Ditto on that, grandfathered in from the old days. I think it’s 1% now.
I lost my car keys yesterday and they weren’t plugged into anything. That was fiendish of them. Am in England but the car Is German. Pleased to report my Rock was unaffected by the fiendish episode and streamed beautifully throughout the the successful search to recover them.
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+1 Jim 
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I keep music on mi iPad so I can listen during storms 
I had a lightning strike at home about 10 years ago. It took out the Philips TV, a portable TV, DVD player and Sky box. It had fried all the power supplies. I was really worried about all my expensive Meridian kit on the same circuit but I needn’t have worried, as all were fine. Obviously, the quality of the equipment matters.
I really don’t believe any electronic kit is lightening proof
When you feel the percussive thump as next doors palm tree goes up in flames 15 meters away, it’s quite serious
My ADSL filter was in 8 pieces scattered across a 2 meter square !!!
I think luck comes into it 
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We had some intense storms late last week and did have a power outage for several hours on Saturday.
My wife was watching a scary movie at the time and in the movie scene the lights flickered and went out amazingly in sync with the house lights going out. I could not have planned it better if I tried. The UPS systems kept the entertainment system and the network up so the movie continued without interruption. She freaked. Then the generator kicked in and all was well.
Found out from the utility folks that a squirrel had shorted a high voltage line causing the outage.
Thankfully we did not suffer any damage from the storms, but I’m guessing it did not end well for the squirrel…
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Squirrel for dinner?
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Hope you like it fried.
Did you know …
Running Deep Cycle batteries in a UPS just to power general load really screws the battery . It will reduce the battery life dramatically
We have power cuts routinely, our 2 battery UPS batteries lasted just over a year … What used to run for 4 hrs dropped to 90 mins then worse
No movies for us
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I’ve had UPS backups, seems like forever, for the desktop computers and company equipment when I worked from home. Those were mainly to provide time to shutdown gracefully, and it is a pain when they start alerting to bad batteries. About a year sounds right.
We have a Batteries + store close to us so replacing the batteries is not a big deal but it’s still a pain and expensive.
I added the UPS for the entertainment system mainly to avoid power outages during firmware updates, thinking I could turn off the high drain components (TV, subs, etc) to provide enough time for the updates to finish.
Then I added one for the Network components and Nuc/Rock so I would still have music and internet during outages.
With the addition of a 27KW whole house backup generator, to keep the AC going and the refrigerator/freezers working during this pandemic, the additional benefit is the UPS systems only need to keep things going for 20 seconds until the generator is up and running. That is the best addition yet. Didn’t plan for it, just worked out hat way.
But I still have to replace the UPS batteries when the alarms start chiming. Maybe things will get better on that end.
I thought whole house systems came on line almost instantaneously. Maybe some do and some don’t.
The control unit starts the engine immediately when the outage is detected, then allows a few seconds for it to stabilize and to determine if it is a very brief outage. If the outage is more than 5 seconds then the breaker is switched from city to generator power. There are probably more expensive systems with big batteries to provide uninterrupted power during the switch.
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I have the same sort of system as @Mike_LC. I have UPS coverage on the network gear, and on my wife’s work desktop machine. Those UPSs have been complaining of weak batteries for a few years now, but they only need to keep the powerline up for the 15 seconds it takes for the generator to kick on, stabilize, and transfer over. The one thing I always do with my UPSs is remove the alarm buzzer from the circuit board. “Yeah I know the power is out, you don’t have to scream and freak out my dogs too…”
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I have a Home Depot 5000 watt gasoline powered generator I purchased years ago after Atlanta had 3 ice storms in 3 weeks and lost power for days each time. I installed a panel and tied it into 6 circuits. We haven’t had an ice storm since I purchased the generator. It seems to have solved the problem.
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So it’s still doing its job nicely then. 
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Removing the alarms sounds like a good idea, had not thought about that. Some of mine have alarm silencers build in but not all.
The problem I’ve had with my UPSs is that even the ones that have the silencer, it’s a push button that logically resets itself when the power comes back on. (Twenty years ago, the APS UPSs used ot have dip switch settings that would silence them, but not anymore.) So when the power goes off, the thing beeps even though I silenced it last time the power was off. The beeping freaks out one of my more sensitive dogs, and I don’t much like them either, so I do beep-ectomies on a lot of my gear with needless beepers.
Sheldon
Are you licensed to do that procedure?
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I run a fly-by-night back-alley beep-ectomy clinic.
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