Lightning Protection Systems

Lightning protection systems are the current evolution of the invention introduced by Benjamin Franklin: the lightning rod. Today, lightning protection systems are in use on thousands of buildings, houses, factories, towers.

This article will review the importance of lightning arrestor and what the systems can produce and cannot produce.

Components of Lightning Protection
Lightning rods or ‘air terminals' are just a small part of a complete lightning protection system. In fact, the rods may play the least important part in a system installation. A lightning protection system comprises three main components:

1. Rods- can be found in different shapes, sizes, and designs. The functions of different lightning rods and even the necessity they are two sticks altogether are subjects of many scientific debates.

2. Conductor Cables - hefty wires that carry lightning current in the rods to the floor.

3. Ground Rods - Long, thick, deep rods buried deep into the ground around a protected house. It connects the conductor wires to those rods to complete a safe path for a lightning discharge around a house.

The coil wires and ground rods are the most important components of a lightning protection system, accomplishing the main aim of diverting lightning current past a structure. A complete security setup, given great cable protection and a decent grounding, will still work with no air terminals.

A lightning protection system's only aim is to secure the building and its occupants when lightning occurs. And below are what lightning protection system do and don’t do.

• Do not attract lightning

• Don't and Can't dissipate or Protect against lightning by ‘draining' a storm of its charge

• Many do not provide surge protection for sensitive electronics

• Offer fire protection and structural damage protection by preventing a hot, volatile lightning channel from passing through building materials


How a lightning protection system functions

With no designated route to reach the ground, a lightning strike may use any conductor accessible inside a home or building. This may include the phone, cable, or electrical lines, the gas or water pipes, or the structure itself. Lightning will follow at least one of these paths to earth, which is still advisable to have a good Earthing System and sometimes jumping through the atmosphere via a side flash to reach a better-grounded conductor. As a result, lightning presents several dangers to that house or building:

• Fire- Fireplace can start anywhere the exposed lightning station connections, penetrates or comes near flammable material (wood, paper, gas pipes, etc.) in a construction - where structural lumber or insulation inside walls and roofs. When lightning follows electrical wiring, then it will often overheat or even revamp the wires, creating a fire hazard anyplace along influenced circuits.

• Negative flashes - Negative flashes can leap across chambers, injuring anybody who appears to be in the way. They're able to ignite materials such as gas can in a garage.

• Damage to construction substances - The explosive shock wave created by a lightning discharge can blow out pieces of walls, fragment concrete, and plaster, and shatter nearby glass.


Adding a protection system doesn't prevent a strike, but, gives it a much better, safer route to earth. The air terminals, cables, and ground rods work together to take the immense currents away from the construction, preventing fire and most appliance damage.

Surge protectors are different lightning protection system. These appliances give a certain protection against voltage spikes from everyday power surges and distant lightning strikes. My next article going to be on different between Surge protector and Lightning Protection System.

A common surge protector has no influence on the violent, catastrophic burst of current from a very near or direct lightning strike. Immediate lightning current is too large to shield with a tiny electronic device inside a power strip. If your surge protector is in the way of the lightning's course, part of the lightning will flash over or through the device - regardless of the number of capacitors and battery banks involved.

Not only that, but not even a full-fledged lightning protection system with rods, wires, and the grounds will guarantee against damage to computers and electronics. For any method to offer 100% security, it must divert 100% of the lightning current from a direct strike which is impossible.
It is likely for ‘side flashes' to happen within a home or building, where a part of the lightning will leap across an entire area to reach the ground- such as from the electrical wiring system to well-grounded water pipes.

Determined by the packing of surge protection devices are misleading regarding lightning protection, implying that the devices can prevent any ramifications of a strike. Sometimes, they will - as long as they aren't in the direct line of fire. But, nothing can guarantee complete protection from a direct or close strike.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't use a surge protector, or a full-fledged lightning rod system. Any apparatus will offer a little security against regular power line spikes and remote lightning strikes. But when lightning hits or nearby, bets it will damage the surge protector.

The best, and cheapest, way to guard your stereo, television, computer, or any electronic appliance is to turn off power, telephone, cable, (modem), and antenna connections during a thunderstorm.

Lightning dissipation/removal myths

Products called ‘lightning elimination' or ‘lightning dissipation' apparatus have arisen as a consequence of two myths:
1: That a thunderstorm's charge can empty or otherwise affected by items on the ground.
2: Cloud-to-ground lightning discharges start from the floor. These products, still being marketed now, claim to prevent a direct lightning strike to the object on which they're installed. The devices have varying looks, but are characterized with a metallic frame with countless sharp-pointed bristles, needles or thin rods.

The lightning arrester is said to prevent or reduce direct lightning strikes to objects on which they're set up, using corona discharge to do the following:
1: To empty a storm of its own charge before lightning can happen.
2: To create a localized ‘space charge' within the protected region, which diverts lightning strikes 3: To earn initiation of upward leaders from the item more difficult, by reducing the odds of a direct stepped leader-ground main link.

No man-made corona discharge on this small scale has the slightest chance of draining charge quicker than a gargantuan thunderstorm cloud is generating it. And although small-scale corona helps prevent the initiate of laboratory-generated sparks (from Van de Graaff generators), this can't extrapolate to apply to full-sized lightning discharges, corona discharge from little ‘dissipates is insignificant into a full-sized thunderstorm and will do nothing to alter the occurrence or behavior of lightning in its general environment.

Cloud-to-ground lightning strikes start high in thunderstorms, miles above the surface at which floor items have none result. Even after initiation of the discharge, the downward-moving stepped main is blind' to objects on the ground until it's very near the ground, in 50 to 100 feet. In the distance, lightning will strike within the area it descends on, regardless of any apparatus nearby that promise to divert or prevent the strike.
Along with the obvious technological defects with the idea of lightning ‘dissipation, they have demonstrated ' and ‘removal' apparatus to be unsuccessful in real-world installations. It strikes many ‘lightning dissipation' apparatus on buildings and towers. Despite the evidence, they continue to market, installed and promoted.


Lightning security facts

• Rods and protection systems don't attract lightning, nor do they influence where lightning will strike.

• Rods or security systems do not and cannot prevent lightning nor will they ‘release' thunderstorms.

• Lightning protection systems (comprise rods, cables, and groundings) are custom-designed for individual structures and need complex engineering to run. Qualified contractors should only install them.

• Lightning protection systems do not always prevent harm to electronics or computers. You still ought to unplug such apparatus during thunderstorms to guarantee enough protection.

http://www.techwizard.com.ng/components-of-lightning-protection/