*wiggles my ass at you* so yeah, metal-oxide varistors pretty much outperform silicone avalanche diodes in every important surge protection characteristic. SADs technically have a faster response time, on the order of single-digit picoseconds, but that's a misleading statistic because transient voltage surges typically take around 8-20 milliseconds to spike so that increased speed isn't really necessary! SADs also crowbar, or interrupt the load, whereas MOVs maintain a constant supply *seductively sliding my paws down my hips* oh yeah, why spec TVSS units for 250kAIC when most transient surge events peak at below 10kA? well, it actually increases the service life of the device! most well-built units can survive about 25 years of regular surges *squishing my boobs together* yeah, 400V sounds like a lot of let-through voltage, but that's coming from a suppressed 20kV C3 impulse! it's also for the primary and branch units individually, using them in series can reduce it to as little to a 60-70V surge for a 208V line-line circuit
