POST FALLSLightning might not strike in the same place twice, as the saying goes, but AC Data Systems Inc. has developed a way to summon its sheer energyover and over againin a laboratory setting. It now is using that capability to improve its ability to shield customers sensitive electronic equipment from damage caused by power spikes.


Basically were kind of a firewall between over-voltage and the equipment were trying to protect, says Brad Herr, president of AC Data, which makes surge-suppression equipment mostly for the wireless-communications industry.


To help it fortify that firewall, the Post Falls-based company has set up a test facility at its headquarters here to help it determine with lightning-like surges precisely how much energy its surge suppressors can handle without being destroyed, Herr says. That facility, called the Barry Ryan Center for the Advancement of Surge Protection Technologies, basically will help the company fulfill one of its central product-design tasks, whichas Herr puts it succinctlyis to blow stuff up.


The company set it up last summer, and despite its fancy name, recognizing AC Datas co-founder and chief design engineer, its an innocuous-looking and minimally equipped 250-square-foot room. Its located on the manufacturing floor of the companys 22,000-square-foot building in the Riverbend Commerce Park.


Visitors who might expect to see giant steel balls emitting continuous electrical arcs, or something similar drawn from memories of old science fiction movies, would be disappointed. Instead, the room contains just a handful of file cabinet-sized capacitors, electrical conduits and boxes, and a relatively small, makeshift-looking tabletop testing area, where the electrical charge is applied to components that are to be tested.


The system, though, has a total charge-delivery capabilitymeasured in one-ampere-per-second units called Coulombsthats roughly three times greater than 99 percent of the lightning flashes that occur worldwide, the company claims.


The integral part of the test facility is the capacitors, which AC Data bought from a Boeing Co. surplus division and are able to store large amounts of electricity. The company builds up energy in them slowly to a desired level, and then releases it all at once, from a control panel just outside the room.


The energy release causes a huge white flash, bright enough that visitors are advised not to look at it directly through an observation window at one end of the room, and an electrical-type bang easily loud enough to startle employees working nearby, if it werent for a warning buzzer that is sounded shortly before each test.


Herr says the new test facility gives us a lot of capabilities in the design side of things by being able to pinpoint more precisely how much electricity AC Datas products can handlefrom lightning-caused and other types of surgesas well as how to improve them.


That latter benefit is particularly important right now, he says, because Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL), the big nonprofit product-safety testing and certification organization, is developing new tests and tougher standards for surge-suppression equipment that could have a big impact on the industry when implemented.


Now, when we go to UL, we know exactly what our products are capable of, he says.


Also, he says, the company expects to save money by testing its products in-house, rather than having to send them to outside labs.


AC Datas products, which include modules, panels, and other devices, cost $60 to $4,000 each, and the company sells them worldwide to some of the biggest players in the wireless-communications industry.


It went through a slump when the technology market crashed, but its revenues have been growing at 35 percent to 40 percent annually for the last three years, Herr says. They reached $10 million last year, which still was short of the 13-year-old companys previous best year, but they should climb to a new record this year, he says.


Things are good. We learned some things in the downturn, so were more profitable now, he adds.


The company currently employs about 65 people, is looking for more salespeople, and probably will add about five employees this year, Herr says.


AC Datas product niche, hard-wired surge suppressors, is a $250-million-to-$350-million-a-year global market and is continuing to grow, but its growth is slowing as the market matures, so the company is working to diversify, he says.


One example of that diversification is a new self-contained, battery-powered portable security system, called Site-Guard, that it has developed and has begun marketing. Targeted at the construction industry, such as to protect job sites lacking electrical power or land-line phone service, it has outputs for on-site alarms, such as sirens or lights, but also stores an alarm-activity history and can notify contacts remotely, such as through a cell-phone text message, of an intrusion.


AC Data was founded in 1993 by Ryan, Mary Munger, Barbara Midgley, and Bert Blaisdell, all of whom formerly had worked at Hayden Lake-based Transtector Systems. The building that houses its headquarters and plant is located at 806 W. Clearwater Loop at Riverbend.


Contact Kim Crompton at (509) 344-1263 or via e-mail at kimc@spokanejournal.com.