Experimental study on lightning protection performance of air terminals

There are claims that ESE (early streamer emission) air terminals offer a vastly increased zone of protection over that of traditional lightning rods by causing the early emission of an upward streamer/leader and in contrast to ESE, multipoint DAS (dissipation array systems) eliminate lightning stroke to utilities by generating the same polarity charges to cloud charges. This paper deals with the results of a comparative test of a particular type of ESE air terminals and DAS with a simple rod conducted in the KERI HV laboratory, which include lightning impulse voltage tests, flashover direction tests and corona emission current measurements. Results from these tests show a completely random scattering of characteristics to the conventional and special air terminals under identical electrical and geometrical conditions. Also the characteristics of special air terminals are not superior to a simple rod for lightning and switching impulse voltages.