Analysis of the Thunderstorm Activity in Portugal for its Application in the Lightning Protection of Wind Turbines

This paper presents a brief characterization of wind power in Portugal, considering the installed power capacity, the capacity under construction, and the location of wind farms. It also describes the Portuguese Lightning Location System, and presents the results of the occurrence of cloud-to-ground strikes both temporally and geographically distributed and the accumulative probability of the peak current. Based on these results, new ground flash density maps were drawn. Thus, this paper allows the characterization of discharges occurring in Portugal, helping to improve risk analysis and the protection systems adopted.