Lightning protection effect of lightning tower set up in wind power station based on upward leader progression model

Abstract

The wind power stations on the coast of the Japan Sea have high risks to be damaged by upward lightning in winter, so that sometimes lightning towers have been set up as a countermeasure. The upward leader progression model (ULP model) is proposed as a prediction method of lightning protective effect of upward lighting in winter. However, there are only few observational data, so that validation examples of lightning shielding effect using this prediction method are few. One wind turbine and one lightning tower have been set up at the Uchinada wind power station, and the lightning observations have been continued and 77 observational data have been reported so far. In this paper, we have made a comparative study of the lightning ratios estimated by ULP model and by observational data. Although there were some cases that had big differences in lightning ratio due to the wind direction, the final result of general lightning ratio was almost the same. Regarding the wind direction distribution used in ULP model, there were some differences in number between proposed wind direction distribution and observed wind direction distribution. However, it doesn't have a great impact on the calculation of the lightning ratio due to the differences in this paper. © 2011 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.