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Lightning

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ThomasJ:
Something occured to me last night. I was mulling over my design options and it occured to me that if I put up a 40' tower to run a turbine, it would be the tallest thing in the field and would act as a giant lightning rod. I was curious, is there a system for protecting our work from lightning? It's a concern here because in the summertime, we get some wicked storms through here because the valley works like a bit of a funnel for weather systems

Rob Beckers:
Hi Thomas,

Being in the wind turbine business, and having that happen to a few customers, I asked myself the exact same question. I've written up the result here (5 very long Web pages with lots of references). The long-and-short of it is that yes, you can protect things from lightning, but it is not easy nor cheap. On the bright side, by following a few guidelines you can make a turbine install much more lightning proof than it would otherwise have been, without breaking the bank, even if survival of inverters and such is not always guaranteed.

In general though, I would suggest not to obsess too much about getting hit by lightning. It is actually pretty rare for small wind turbines (on 60 to 100' towers). In the cases mentioned above it was not the turbine that got hit, it was the ground nearby, and the strike current coupled into the well-pump wiring (for both of the two cases that I know about). From there it jumped to the grid and took out the inverter.

Hope this helps!

-RoB-

ThomasJ:
Rob, thanks for taking the time to put that together. Excellent information.

dnix71:
It's the bolt coming up from the ground that blows things up. I made a lot of money one Saturday repairing a computerized concrete mixing setup in West Palm Beach. The bolt struck HV lines 1/2 mile away and came up under a mobile home outfitted to run the mixing controls. 3 APC battery backups were fried, along with some relays and a couple of transformers.

The mobile home was the lowest structure for miles, but that's what took the most damage.

Mary B:
1 ground rod at the tower base and 4 more spaced out in a circle with a radius twice the ground rod length. All rods bonded together with 1/0 copper that is welded. The more rods you add going out in each direction from the tower the greater the dissipation of a strike. This looks like a + when put together. Add high quality lightning arrestors to everything electronic and you can survive a direct hit, radio/tv stations do it all the time

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