What about Lightning ?

[winston]

It was set up at a cabin in Wisconsin.

I did very well and kept the (full sized) fridge running through an inverter

The machine worked very well until a freak fall thunderstorm wacked the inverter out shutting down the fridge and since I didn't get there for a few weeks the food was .... well you get the drift.

The charger was ok until a bird took out a blade (found the decapitated critter on the shed roof)

so my question ---how do you deal with lightning ?  

I really like the 403 and am considering getting 3 more to cantelever off the old water windmill tower

[ghurd]

Lightning.  God puts it where he wants it to be.  The only hope is an arrestor, IMHO.   But I am not in the lightning capitol of the world.

But I digress.

I can not imagine anyone actually liking a 403.

Especially after they have tried (almost) any other homebrew unit.

Here, a TDM or GE ½ HP ECM would make a lot more power for a lot less money in a more reliable fashion.

G-

[winston]

Well it ran continuously and virtually trouble free (aside from the bird strike) cranked out 40 to 50 amps for hours on end during storms for 450 bucks--it more than paid for itself in the 3 1/2 years it ran all with ZERO maintenance

a new set of blades cost $48 bucks

what's not to like ?

even survived the lightning strike and lots of violent midwest thunderstorms

what's not to like ?

it does get a little loud when the winds get to 30 or 35 mph but it keeps on punching out the watts, it never quits even in high winds

what's not to like ?

[fungus]

People critiscise the 403 because it does not do well at all in lower winds and takes a lot of wind to start up. You may just be lucky in that you have a good wind site and if so then it may not be so bad. The noise issue is a problem for other people too, unless you have it quite a long way from where you are or you just have good sound isolation then it might not be such a problem. However, as ghurd has suggested there is much better alternatives which can put out more power for a lower price.

On lightninhg protection, whatever you do wont do much, lightning is going to strike whether or not you do anything but heres a few suggestions:

*Ground the tower well with ground rods connected to the base

*In cables try to have right angles in bends

*Find arrestors and install them in the system

There's many other things you can do, which I'm sure other people will say, but be prepared if there is damage(spare parts etc).

[wdyasq]

Some folks can't follow simple instructions.

Ron

[kurt]

winston, i removed your comment with the large picture in it as it was way to large for this site pictures have to be sized to under 150k and under 640 x 480 pixels to be posted here you can read the rules here http://www.fieldlines.com/special/faq

[winston]

Sorry for the screw up

[ghurd]

Yes, what Angus said. About lightning and Air's.

You must be in a lot better wind area than most.

I have only ever seen one Air-X turning fast enough to charge, and only saw that happen once.  

A $20 TDM could be doing 50W before the Air starts moving fast enough.  Or maybe $200 for a 1HP ECM (a bit of reconnection), and complete set of ready to use Jerry Blades, should do ~400W and start a lot sooner.  Or a Garbogen and Jerry Blades for 1000W, not sure what that would cost.

But as long as you are happy, we are happy.

G-

[winston]

Hopefully this file is closer to the size limits

This is the rebuilt water pumper

hopefully will get it connected to the well this summer to fill the cistern and then the overflow will go to the pond

the 403 was cantelevered on on corner of the tower using 1 1/2 schedule 40 pipe but the pipe cracked after a few years I need to make a stronger mount

I am planning to get 3 more --one for each corner for a total of about 2 kw

that way if one goes TU I will still have power until a repair can be made

[alancorey]

It's still pretty big (1342 x 1006), but I like it.  I made a reduced version for wallpaper.  I like the looks of those things, however impractical they may be.  Now one of these boring Windows boxes beside me has wallpaper anyway.

  Alan

[Norm]

 Is there a way to limit the width of text

automatically? You removed the too large picture

but the damage has already been done in this

case ...some people don't realize what a wide

column of text they are posting....just because

the text automatically drops down one line doesn't

mean that's how it's going to look when it's

posted....well actually I can understand the

enthusiasm that some/most of us have to get

our answer out to a posting....so guys....

would you please hit the preview button before

you hit that other button?

     grumpy old Norm.

[kurt]

still way to many pixels and file size is still a little over the limit. i will leave it this time but this is the first, last, and only time i cut you a break from now on if they are oversize they are gone so learn how to resize your pictures properly. mite i sugjest irfanview or photofiltre for a photo editer they are bolth free.  

[jmk]

 The best way to deal with lightening is to make sure you have your tower properly grounded. You need #4 or bigger wire coming from your tower to a long ground rod ( 8'). Start your wire high enough on the tower so it has a large radius to the ground rod. Then run ground wires from the ground rod to ground rods at every guy wire footing location. Again make long wide radius from each guy wire to the ground rods so every guy wire is grounded. The commercial towers berry wire in circles the radius of the guy footings so every ground rod is connected. I did mine like a plus sign. Anyway all your ground rods have to be connected to gather to give equal ground voltage across the whole set up. When your power comes from the tower run it to a guy footing that is parallel to your house. Then put a lightening arrestor on it connected to a ground rod. Make a sharp turn to go back to the house. Barry the power cables and a ground cable that hooks to the ground rod at that footing to run to the house. If you use conduit make sure to put the ground wire right along side of it on the outside of the conduit. When you get to the house you want to come up to where you can make a 90 deg turn before entering the structure. before that 90 drive another ground rod and connect your ground rod. This ground rod needs to get connected to your negative battery and your ground rod that the grid uses. This way all your ground system is at the same voltage. If its not the lightening can jump from one area to another area and fry what's in between. Usually the controls are what's in between, so make sure your bond is connected to the whole system. Plus you can put arrestors on before your controls too. What happens is your tower becomes a well grounded lightening  rod. If lightening is going to hit the tower the tower will draw the voltage from the ground and make a spike of current that is drawn by the cloud coming up from the top of the tower. Once this spike is large enough the cloud lightening will come down to meet it in mid air. when they connect they neutralize the ground and cloud. This is why they say lightening never strikes twice in the same spot. If the cloud has more current than the ground the extra will go safely to ground. Other wise your tower can melt and guy wires can melt and controls can fry and fires can be made and people can get hurt. You should follow your local code and have it inspected so your insurance will cover any damage.

[winston]

Thanks for the info on lightning

this should be very helpful

[jmk]

 Another thing too is if you don't ground your tower it picks up static electricity on the guy wires and tower that can attract lightening also. Just like air plains when they fly they build a static charge up and need to get plugged into a the ground with a wire. I used to be a crew chief in the Air Force. I got shocked by a jet once when hooking up the ground wire and it was like touching 110 voltage. You may have been shocked by your vehicles when getting out?

 I made a plug from a 240 volt female end with all the terminals connected together. I have the male end on the three phase coming from the tower. If there is a thunder storm coming I unplug it at the tower and short it out with that female plug. I am going to put another one at the other side of the rectifier. This way I can unplug it there too and not even have it so it is hooked to the battery and controls. I want to use a female outlet from that same 240 volt to connect it back to the battery or it can be plugged into a different one that I will put jumper cables on to use for twelve volt battery jump charging. This way I figure I can start my tractor or vehicles in general if they go dead. Then I can just plug it back into the R/E batteries. This way too even if the lightening spikes the lead wires they wont be hook up to my controls. That is if I am home to unplug it of course. I live on a hill so read a lot about lightening. Another thing that the commercial guys do is make loop with your wires before going in the house. I think they just do that when the tower is right beside the hut and the wires aren't berried at all. Helps keep the water from flowing to the wall too. I didn't do that one because I buried my wires.

[scottsAI]

Hello winston,

Lightning will go where lightning wants. Nothing you do will stop it. So you must control it.

Here are three stories to give you an idea of the problem:

Friend has 100 foot amateur radio antenna tower free standing, heavy metal, base has 2 inch braided ground strap 3 foot going to 8 foot coper 3/4 inch ground rood. All kept in excellent repair. Going from tower to house RG6 cable and a thin 4 wire rotor control, 30 feet between house and tower. Lightning struck the tower, at night with him in the home, very exciting! You can see the burn marks skipping along the tower, the burn marks end at the thin RG6 wire, which is now missing. Looking to the house, you see a pattern of burn holes in the aluminum siding on 3/4 of the house were a nail was beneath. Most of the electronics in the home are fried, VCR, micro wave, TV, phone answering machine, Computer etc, some equipment without electronics seems to still be working. The RG6 had a lightning arrester after it came into the house with a local ground. He had done everything by the book. Right angle did not protect his house. Arrestors, ground rods...

Story two

I installed alarm systems for a while. One home owner had a nice project vehicle in the garage, wanted that covered to. We ran the wire from the alarm system to garage, buried 12 inch. Lightning hit near the garage, not directly that we can tell. The buried wires were burnt along with the alarm panel, which had lightning arrestors on it. Was mounted near the fuse panel, use it's ground. Buried wires can help but not always. I have heard of lightning hitting the ground and coming into the house through the power lines in the ground.

Story three

From my Dad, retired to Florida 30 years ago. Florida gets a lot of property damage due to lightning. Some enterprising individual convinced the insurance company's to offer reduced rates to people with lightning protection systems installed. Several thousand lightning protection systems were installed. Later the insurance company's realized the homes with lightning protection systems were getting more damage! Two reasons for this, poor installation and a flaw with the whole idea.

I have spent dozens of hours searching the web for lightning protection systems, theories how they work etc. Lots of conflicting information. I'm not sure its completely understood.

Ben Franklin style lightning rod. You know the one with a point. Have you ever seen a Tesla demonstration, systems throws a couple foot bolt. Very impressive, using a simple wand with a very sharp point (needle point) can suck the entire energy of the system. Now as long as the energy is depleted this works great. Problem is lightning is formed between earth and clouds, basically a huge capacitor, one lightning rod will only suck the energy of a small area. If the energy potential is exceeded, the air ionized by the lightning rod now ATTRACTS the lightning and it takes the hit. Due to the fickle nature of the lightning you have NO guarantee the lightning will follow the wiring into the ground. Using thick wire, curved, right angle, same ground potential etc do not work. Some reports it can help, no guarantee.

When lightning hits in an area there seems to be induced lightning or secondary effects to the lightning. The lightning arrestors, wire at right angles, ground rods do seem to handle this OK, so is worth doing to some extent, I would not spend a lot of money on this.

So what is the raining wisdom? Do not use lightning rods on the thing you want protected! Place several lightning rods around it. The belief is the rods offer an inverted cone of protection going up. The rods are placed so the cones intersect above the area you want protected. The rods have nothing there so if lightning does strike, who cares?

I plan to put a wire fence around my property with a pointed rod every so often. Tall enough so nobody will get hurt from the point.

I hope I gave you an idea nothing is definitive about lightning protection, do some reading and decide what works for you.

Have fun,

Scott.

[winston]

Thank you Scots and jmk

There is a large metal pole barn next to the tower maybe I should concentrate on grounding that structure to draw the lightning away from the tower

the old dairy barn has lightning rods already

thanks again for the information

[TomW]

scott;

I got home from vacation a week ago Saturday to a fairly totaled electronics collection.

So far we lost 2 older low end laptops, a broadband internet router, 2  ethernet hubs, 1 USB hub, a linksys "Slug", 2 custom built USB devices [tracker and a DVM], a set of 3 35 amp bridge rectifiers, 2 set top satellite TV boxes and associated hardware, 3 CD / DVD players, 1 cordless phone, a toaster, terrestrial television antenna mounted booster and the dryer is not working properly. Frankly, thats as far as I got in a week checking things. No big ticket losses like the well pump or my fairly new Outback inverter. With our high deductible and the fact that this stuff was mostly older equipment [that worked perfectly] we will likely just eat the loss.

My point is: I thought we are pretty well protected. Solar panels and mount well grounded, tower legs well grounded grid power system grounded [per code] and it still got in and damaged things that were not directly connected to the power lines. Main "common connection" would be the cat5 system for the network, but even that was not hardwired to all the networked equipment as they were wireless.

Makes no sense. In our case I tend to think it was a ground strike that induced a massive voltage spike into pretty much everything with anything that remotely acted as an antenna. Things like phone lines, cat5, coax from dishes or TV antenna probably got it inside on multiple cables. Earlier today while troubleshooting the sat TV system I discovered a reciever I used for dish aiming and worked perfectly when I stuck it on the shelf is now dead.

Some stuff ran on batteries and was not connected to the grid for power but other than the stored receiver and the toaster were on the network. Maybe it was multiple strikes but thats the only way I can see logic to all the damaged stuff on such diverse systems here not to mention 2 buildings and the tower. house and office are 100 ft apart tower is 300 feet from either of them.

Nearly back to telegraph here as far as communications is concerned. Luckily, I found a cheap router so I am online with my main laptop which was with me on vacation.

Seriously rethinking my protection strategy here. No clear clue where to start. My personal theories  are centered around giving it an easier path to ground than through my stuff. Clearly this is not working.

Just my experience recently.

I should do a Diary on this but thought I would look like I was whining if I got started.

Bottom Line:

I doubt you can actually fully protect yourself if you live where sky sparks party. Especially if you're using towers with height for turbines.

Cheers.

TomW

[wdyasq]

A couple of weeks ago there was a lightening strike in my town. It took the power out for several hours. The fireworks of the transformer hit were clearly visible out the window.

 I run several computers on a router/dsl connection. When the power came back on, my 'Main' computer, on Linux came up as usual.  A second Linux box failed to connect to the hub and the Windoze box failed too. Switching cat5 connections tells me at least the router has some toasted connections. The 'dsl' box, phone and other electronics seem fine (I don't do 'TV').

A fresh router is on order. At that time I will determine if the network connections on the other computers are toast or? The stuff that toasted had ~25' and longer cat5 cables. The channel that didn't fry had short cables.

My only thought is the lightening strike was close enough for the cat5 cables to pick up a charge and destroy some router parts (and maybe network stuff in the computers).

Ron

[scottsAI]

Hello TomW,

"thought I would look like I was whining"

I would give that one to you. I would whining about it!-)

Lightning never strikes twice... don't believe it, actually more likely.

One in a million chance... OK how about I win the lottery instead!

If you have a lightning hit, some items may work OK for a while then fail. Test out and use as much as you can before you claim anything on your homeowners insurance. I made sure my insurance covered replacement cost not what the 10 year old dryer was worth. I hope you did the same. Or will change it for the future. Cost maybe 10% more, in my book well worth the cost. Same coverage for the house, replacement cost not what it cost me.

Protection

Some discount the needle point theory as being of any benefit, I have seen a Tesla demonstration with the needle point, works for me. I have also seen many results of lightning strikes, often does not make any sense what happened.

I believe strongly in covering my butt, with the best I know.

Here is what I know:

The earth is one plate in a capacitor, the local impedance of the plate is rather high, due to the size of the plate the overall impedance is low. The needle point may work, may not, not too costly to put several in. The fence I will have so, make it good for several things, put several points on the fence, making sure its metal!-) and all the segments are connected together. Make sure the fence does not come near any electronics!!!!!! Far, Far away.

If something is tall, then I would try to figure out how to get a couple points above it. But well away. And hope your standard protection covers you for the secondary or induced effects of the lightning.

You know anything tall with wiring will attract lightning. To be honest I'm rather surprised how little I hear about it here? Which is a good thing. Maybe we are just blessed.

Use all the other protection schemes CYA.

Good luck putting everything back together. I keep duplicates of important computer equipment, pick it up on a great sale. I may now find a secondary location for it even if a bit of a pain.

Have fun, (Pretend if needed, it will make you feel better)

Scott.

[scottsAI]

Hello TomW,

There was one blessing, you were gone when the lightning hit.

Depending on where you might have been when the lightning hit, bad things could have happened to you.

So it hit while you were away and SAFE!

Have fun,

Scott.

[coldspot]

winston-

"the bird strike"

I've been reading everything i can on this and researched as far back as it goes many times.

Thats the first one I've read about that actually happened, if it did.

Wow,

A friend of mine has gone thru 3 403's and never saw his bank at 12 volts.

He's on his 3rd Malard now with about the same results.

$0.02

[winston]

All I can say is that I was pleased ---it never shut down and really cranks some amps in the winter storms up there --over 40 A at 12 V

It is a very windy site though

There is  a voltage adjustment on mine that I needed to adjust to get the 13.4 V at the battery bank

I also had to use very heavy cables to the battery bank-- # 2 copper because I screwed up and got the 12 V version--should have gone 24 or even 48

Broken blade, decapitated blackbird but I didn't see it happen...

[scottsAI]

Hello wdyasq,

Wonder how things turned out?

UPS on computers?

Shielded cat5 cable, think it would help?

Have fun,

Scott.

[dnix71]

I made a lot of money one Saturday earlier this summer fixing some computer equipment at a local concrete plant that was fried by lightning that struck power company equipment nearby.

The APC ups's were also fried. You can't protect against lightning. The code is actually the problem. There is a positive bolt coming up from ground to meet the negative bolt coming down from the clouds.

The equipment at the cement plant was destroyed precisely because it was grounded, and therefore was a solid path up.

If you are standing near a storm and there is a sudden downdraft of cool air, you better run like hell. I was taking out the garbage at work, and there was a sudden downdraft. I slammed the door shut just in time. Lightning struck the roof above me. The only damage was a burned out modem that was wired across the ceiling.

The air at the top of a t-storm has a positive charge because the sun shining on it knocks out electrons. If the dry cool air sinks to earth at the edge of the storm, it pulls electrons up from the ground, making that spot positive. The cloud of free elctrons at the top can then flow to earth through the rain/moist air in the middle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWhfeo8vCIA&feature=related

watch the return strike is this video.

[bonze82]

I used to live in an area where lightning hit at least once a month frying something... usually a cable box/broadband modem. I went through several cable boxes and cable modems within the year fortunately the cable co. covered all the losses since we were renting the boxes. I put real good surge protection on the entire house at the main junction box for the cable and the cable line shielding was tied to ground by a ground line to help reduce lightning at both the street and the box. Still after every two years we had to have a new line run and a box or modem replaced due to excessive lightning hits.

I knew I wasn't safe due to all of the trees in my yard, they got hit at least once a week due to storms. In case anyone is wondering I live in the New Orleans area.

Several times the lightning arched out of the tree and into the residence, burning out ground lines. I was very fortunate that nothing else was ever fried I think I can owe the nothing else ever being fried to the large steel a/c duct running the length of the house . Yes it had several burn marks down the length of the metal duct. This house was quite old but very well designed for the area.

On one occasion after a lightning storm that happened over night I woke up the next morning and had some computer "woes", I went to check all of the connections just to make sure everything was fine. When I touched the case i got zapped the case was sitting 40 volts above earth ground needles to say I got a nice rude awakening from the computer. Lightning had hit the house and traveled down the ground line for my room burning out the line all the way to the box; it also took out my first surge protector the second one took a hit and saved my equipment. I'm still glad I had 2 surge protectors on my equipment. I removed the first and put the second one up for the sacrifice and put a new one into it's place for extra protection.

The last and final story has to do with one of my former managers. I had told him several times about his home computers having inadequate surge protection one was just a power strip and he'd always laugh at me and call me a lier. Well lightning hit the pole outside his house and fried everything, it even took out the phones on it's way to ground. He called me in a panic cause he was working on a document when the house went dark, wanted to know if the neighborhood was out since his office was 5 blocks away, and I said no we have lights here but lightning hit somewhere near here and caused a nice surge the electric company needs to be called to check the transformer it's steaming the water off of the case. He then said I just walked outside I'm the only one without power and phones, and I said you likely got hit by lightning there isn't much I can do but come by and check everything over and give you an honest assessment of the damages. So I went to his house and replaced the computer power supplies and checked for power. The main breaker tripped and so did 90% of the rest of the breakers he was quite fortunate that the lightning didn't use him as the path of least resistance; as many of you have stated lightning does some strange things. Lightning also took out the hard drive he was lucky we had an identical system at the office that I could take off line and get back on line in a day. So I took the system off line yanked out the drive took off the controller board and got his systems back up and running within an hour. He lost everything except that one computer the others were eventually fixed and everything in the house down to the phones had to be replaced. I also talked him into getting much better surge protectors for everything he owned and a whole house surge protection for everything that he couldn't hookup to a surge protector, he wasn't happy until his insurance went down by 100 a month.

Moral of the stories is make sure you have good surge/spike protection for potential lightning hits and have good gfci's that monitor the hot, neutral, and ground lines that you check monthly. Most of all make sure your house is properly wired it's useless to have surge protectors/lightning arrestors if your house isn't properly wired.