I have a Whirlpool Gold Series refrigerator (purchased new in 2016). For some reason, over the past two months, the power in our neighborhood keeps going out. Sometimes it's out for an hour and other times just for a few seconds. It is not storm related.

Should I consider getting a surge protector for our refrigerator? I have read some conflicting pieces of information. It appears that the compressor has an overload protector built into it, but now I am wondering about control boards, etc.

Advice?

You should go back and punch that salesperson. They should have told you about putting a surge protector on the power outlet when it was purchased. What you described will cause the circuit boards that control the unit to burn or short out. Get one on at once.

FWIW, I have never seen a surge protector on a refrigerator. I have lived in a dozen rentals, apartments, homes etc, and never seen it done. Don't know if it's right or wrong, just an observation.

The overload protector is for longer term running overloads on your compressor and not short time frame spikes from the power supplier. Overload protectors are meant to shut the system down if it is overloaded for 10 minutes but not for 10 seconds. It will not trip out from a typical "transient spike" produced when the utilities breakers or reclosers open or close to protect their system and cause the outage and then when they re-energize. As long as the utilities breakers and reclosers are in good shape these transient spikes are measurable but not generally damaging to consumer equipment. (You probably get bigger ones turning your lighting circuits on and off in your house.) When the utilities breakers and recloser contacts start to wear/pit/arc, then the magnitude of those transient spikes starts to grow and they deliver more energy (heat) into the circuit boards really fast. That is when you can typically start getting problems.

Consider your typical surge suppressor from a big box store for your 120 volt refrigerator outlet might take anything up to a 600 volt spike and clamp it down to 150 or so depending on its rating. Anything above 600 volts will likely toast/fry the internal components in the surge suppressor (some can go to 1000 volts). If you take a 30,000 volt lighting transient on the system it will initially protect the downstream equipment but somewhere in the process the smoke will come out. How do you know your surge suppressor is fried if you don't see the smoke come out? (OK...some of the newer ones do have an indicating light to tell if the components are working or not.

Bottom line....if you and your neighbors are frequently losing electronic circuit boards a properly rated and applied surge suppressor can remedy the problem. It is like insurance. You don't need it.....until you need it.

why not just put one on your electrical panel and protect the whole house?

It's cheap insurance. We just lost a washing machine and dishwasher to lightning strike. Thankfully, the refrigerator survived. All of them now have surge protectors.

Just realize most office "surge protectors" become simple power strips after it handles the first surge. They can usually only handle one.