Abstract
There have been many accidents around wind turbines in Japan, caused by lightning strikes due to weather, climate, and location, etc. The regular inspection method on wind turbines after a lightning strike is generally to stop the operation of the wind turbines for a certain period of time for visual checks. This situation requires another method that will allow the easy detection of lightning strikes. We installed an acoustic emission sensor on the enclosure of a large wind turbines and observed a shock wave produced at the moment the lightning struck the large wind turbines. We successfully detected the lightning strikes and are reporting the details in this paper.
