Lightning Protection Systems
Design
Properly designed lightning protection system offers lightning strikes a low resistance path to ground where the enormous energy is then safely dispersed. Protecting structures & buildings against the direct and indirect lightning strikes is important for the safety of people and equipment inside the buildings. Various levels of protections are considered in the design depending upon the criticality of the installation and a number of other parameters relating to the phenomena of lightning. A typical lightning protection system includes aerial conductors (air terminals) atop the buildings, down conductors to carry lightning currents and an efficient earthing system below the ground.
Experts at SPC have executed projects globally in the areas of design and validation of lightning protection systems. In many countries including India, lightning protection schemes have become mandatory for the ubiquitous high-rise commercial and residential buildings. Designs by SPC are done to comply with the requirements of IS/IEC Std. 62305 Parts 1 to 4. We also undertake re-validation of third-party lightning protection schemes for existing installations.
With decades of experience in High Voltage engineering, SPC expert has made original contributions in the area of lightning performance of grounding systems and these are being referred in many international journals. SPC is the chosen destination for design of lighting protection schemes.
Risk Management
The task of assessing the risk of lightning inflicted damage to a structure and its internal sub systems is a complex procedure when considering all the factors such as the sources of damage, type of damage, type of loss and risk of loss. SPC offers an analytical approach for risk management in accordance with the procedure of IS/IEC 62325 -2. For designing lightning protection schemes, SPC Software computes tolerable limit of risk, calculates the actual risk and then evaluates the protection methods required to reduce the actual risk to be equal to or lower than the tolerable risk. The main outcome from this risk assessment is to select the minimum lightning protection level (LPL) that is used in the lightning protection design. Once the LPS is designed based on the LPL, risk management process is complete when the assessment is made with and without LPS to check for the adequacy.
Experience of SPC experts reveals lightning protection needs to be installed for certain ‘mission-critical’ installations even when the risk assessment process indicated that it is was not required. In few other situations where a direct lightning could cause fire & explosion, a higher LPL (than that required) was also selected to ensure a higher degree of protection.