When I worked for the local electric company they had and offered whole house Surge Protectors that were attached to the back of the meter.

Typically one associates surges with outside events. But a while back I had a surge protector which primarily protected a microwave oven but there were a few occasional use kitchen appliances running in background mode on it as well. On day the surge protector blew (built in breaker did not trip, so it must have been a very fast transient). I bought a new, UL listed one and everything was fine until I used the microwave. It instantly blew the surge protector (but, again, not the breaker) because the microwave oven itself was the source of the surge. However it successfully protected the other appliances that were on the same power strip.