Estimation of lightning vulnerability points on wind power plants using the rolling sphere method

The escalating number of wind power plants in many countries makes their reliability and safety of crucial importance. One of the main causes of damages for wind power plants is constituted by lightning. Hence, appropriate tools for the lightning protection of wind power plants are required. We have developed a new computer program in Visual Basic, LPS 2008, which runs over AutoCAD and is able to perform risk assessment on a structure or on a service due to lightning flashes to ground. Computer simulations obtained by using LPS 2008 are presented, and conclusions are duly drawn.