An Application of Lightning Detection System to Lightning Protection Design for Transmission Lines

Abstract

This paper describes an application of the Lightning Location and Protection (LLP) system to lightning protection design for transmission lines through the observation of lightning characteristics. At first, we investigate relationships between lightning characteristics obtained from LLP system and actual lightning outage data on transmission lines, and examine the validity of lightning protection designs for 187kV transmission lines with a single ground wire. These results clearly show the possibilities to predict lightning striking conditions to transmission lines and lightning performances of transmission lines combining the lightning stroke current values measured by the LLP system with the Electro Geometric Model (EGM) method. A prediction method of lightning performance of transmission lines based on the results is proposed. The proposed method consists of the observation of lightning characteristics by the LLP system, the lightning shielding model based on the EGM method and the calculation model for lightning surge analysis based on the EMTP. Estimated results, that are the relationship between lightning current values and shielding characteristics, lightning outage rates on transmission lines, show good agreement with the observations.