Advances in lightning protection and grounding systems for power systems

Power line outages caused by lightning present a serious engineering problem. Design of overhead power lines with an acceptable level of lightning protection for regions with high density of lightning flashes and high specific resistivity of the soil can be a challenging task. In many cases, shield wires and lightning arresters are widely used means for this purpose, but do not provide the total compliance with the required number of line outages due to lightning and may be not cost effective. This paper describes an alternative method of lightning protection for overhead power fines. The enhanced zone of protection provided by multi-point lightning protectors installed on the poles instead of shield wires will cover most of the span. Implementation of chemically charged grounding rods together with the multi-point protectors will decrease the number of back flashovers causing the trip off of the line or eliminate them, depending on final earthing resistance.