Thunderstorm characteristics favouring downward and upward lightning to wind turbines

Pineda, Nicolau; Montanyà, Joan; Salvador, Albert; Velde, Oscar A. van der; López, Jesús A.

doi:10.1016/j.atmosres.2018.07.012

Cited by 20 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 91 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Contrary to high‐speed video, which may suffer from cloud screening effects, the LMA depicts lightning channels within the cloud with sufficient time resolution and spatial precision to locate their origin and propagation path. Relying on LMA data, Edens et al () and Hill et al (), have analyzed upward propagating leaders (UPL) on rocket‐and‐wire triggered lightning; Wang et al () and Schultz et al () have examined winter UL in Japan and the United States, respectively; and Montanyà et al () and Pineda, Montanyà et al () have studied ULs emerging from wind turbines. These works have revealed that UL are linked to particular meteorological regimes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Zhou et al () pointed out that lower ambient temperature may also have an effect on the initiation of upward leaders: keeping in mind the dependence of the electrification processes on temperature (e.g., Saunders et al, ; Takahashi, ), cloud charges are at lower altitudes in winter, favoring interaction with ground structures such as towers and wind turbines, as reported in the literature (Wang & Takagi, ; Schultz et al, ; Pineda, Bech et al, ). Lately, studies such as Warner et al (), Jiang et al (), Wang et al (), and Pineda et al () have incorporated weather radar data into the analysis, providing a comprehensive survey on the thunderstorm characteristics related to UL.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Meteorological Aspects of Self‐Initiated Upward Lightning at the Säntis Tower (Switzerland)

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Interest in exploring the meteorological conditions favoring upward lightning from tall man‐made structures has grown in recent years, largely due to the worldwide expansion of wind energy. To this end, instrumented towers existing around the world are the most suitable places to study upward lightning. In this context, an LMA network was deployed around the Säntis Mountain (northeast Switzerland) during the summer of 2017, in order to complement the long‐term measurements currently held at the Säntis telecommunications tower, a lightning hot spot in central Europe. This campaign allowed, for the first time, to gather a comprehensive set of observations of self‐initiated upward lightning emerging from the Tower. With the help of C‐band dual‐polarimetric radar data, the present work focuses on the meteorological conditions conductive to self‐initiated upward lightning from the Säntis. The analysis revealed that the upward propagating positively charged leaders spread mostly horizontal above the melting level, after an initial short vertical path from the tower tip. After this initial stage, the majority of upward leaders were followed by a sequence of negative return strokes. The inception upward lightning under a stratiform cloud shield would be favored by the low height of the charge structure. From the obtained results, it turns out that a key feature favoring self‐initiated upward lightning would be the proximity of the tower tip to the melting level.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meteorological Aspects of Self‐Initiated Upward Lightning at the Säntis Tower (Switzerland)

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Keeping in mind the dependence of the electrification processes on temperature (e.g. Takahashi, 1978;Saunders et al, 2006), cloud charges are at lower altitudes in winter, favoring interaction with ground structures such as wind turbines, as reported in literature (Wang and Takagi, 2012;Montanyà et al, 2014;Schultz et al 2018;Pineda et al 2018a;Soula et al, 2019). Consequently, the concept of winter lightning has been recently introduced and conceptualized in the 2018 revision of the "Lightning Protection of Wind Turbines" standard IEC 61400-24 (Méndez et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 Most of winter lightning to tall structures belong to the upward lightning type. Studies like Warner et al (2014), Jiang et al (2014), Schultz et al (2018), Bech et al (2013) and Pineda et al (2018a) have shown that enhanced electric fields at the top of tall structures, combined with a lower altitude of the charge centers (e.g. Montanyà et al, 2016) were enough to allow the initiation of upward lightning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the conditions for winter lightning at the Eagle Nest Tower (2537 m asl) during the Cerdanya-2017 field experiment

Soula

Pineda

Georgis

et al. 2021

Atmospheric Research

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Damages to WTGs by lightning is currently one of the main sources of WTG insurance claims and downtime [48]. The wind turbine structures can easily attract the wrath of storms and the rotation of the blades may also trigger lightning and result in a considerable increase in the number of strikes to a WTG [50][51][52]. Lightning damage is the single largest cause of unplanned downtime in WTGs, and that downtime is responsible for the loss of countless megawatts of power generation [48].…”

Section: Incidence Of Lightning Strikes On Wind Turbinesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Design and Analysis of Earthing System for Wind Turbine Generators from Lightning Discharge Currents

Deshagoni¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

<p>Currently, wind power production is undergoing rapid growth due to the escalating interest in green energy generation. As a result, generators are now choosing to locate wind turbine generators (WTGs) in areas where there is more lightning activity, and earthing problems can be exacerbated further by the soil resistivity being higher than where turbines are usually located. In addition, the desire to capture more energy from the wind has given way to larger WTGs, further increasing the probability of lightning strikes to the structure. This heightened regularity has emphasized the need for an effective grounding system, capable of dissipating the large currents discharged by the lightning into the lightning protection system. This “effective grounding system” must offer a low impedance by limiting the ground potential rise, which is critical due to the wider frequency content of the lightning discharge currents (ranging from DC to several MHz). The design of an effective grounding system for WTGs depends on the calculation of the minimum length of the earth electrodes, soil resistivity and its frequency-dependency, and the impact of WTG foundation. The calculation of the length of earth electrodes needs an accurate measurement of soil resistivity and modeling of the measured resistivity. Hence, this research considers the measured soil resistivity values of an Australian wind farm and presents an analysis of the soil stratification to identify the optimum soil models. The influence of the soil layers on the WTG grounding system is also investigated to install the earth electrodes. As the resistivity of the soil is frequency-dependent, an analysis is performed to evaluate the effect of the frequency-dependent soil parameters on the WTG grounding system at various frequencies of lightning discharge current. In addition, the impact of the rebar of the WTG foundation on the grounding system is evaluated as the rebar shares the lightning discharge currents. The effective length of the earth electrodes is frequency-dependent, and rebar determines the impedance of the grounding system at high-frequencies. The next step in the grounding design is the design of earth electrodes. The current dissipating capacity of the earth electrodes depends on soil resistivity, dimensions of the earth electrodes, and burial depth of the electrodes. However, the traditional practice of designing earth electrodes is based on the soil resistivity alone, considering the uniform soil resistivity model. The conventional method of designing earth electrodes based on the uniform soil resistivity is not practical due to non-homogeneous behavior of the soil resistivity. To enhance the WTG earthing system design, this research proposes a novel method to calculate the minimum length of an earth electrode for uniform and two-layer based soil models considering electrode dimensions and burial depth. The grounding impedance achieved when electrode lengths are calculated using the proposed method is compared to grounding impedance values computed using the conventional method. This comparison shows that the proposed method is an improvement on the current convention. In particular, the proposed method gives a grounding impedance value of less than 10 Ω at low frequencies for all soil resistivity values. This results in a reduction in the potential rise of up to 64% compared to the peak potential value in the conventional method. The benefits offered by the proposed method mean that it can be employed to calculate electrode lengths for the required resistance values based on soil resistivity, electrode dimensions, and burial depth. Such a design may serve as a starting point for an engineer wishing to design a WTG earthing system. Another challenge noted is the practice of assessing the effectiveness of the WTG grounding system. The conventional method is based on achieving a low-frequency resistance of 10 Ω according to the standard IEC 61400-24 and the performance of the grounding system at high frequencies is not considered. Hence, identification of the high-frequency components of the relevant lightning discharge currents is important to understand the performance of the grounding system. An analysis of the wind turbine earthing system for different lightning discharge current wave shapes is performed considering the lightning current waveforms and parameters mentioned in the IEC 61400-24 standard and evaluated the various frequency components and their influence on the WTG grounding system. It is identified that the impedance of the grounding system is minimum for the first short positive stroke current parameters for all the soil resistivity values compared to the first short negative and the subsequent short current wave shapes, although the peak current magnitude is highest for this wave shape. From the analysis of WTG grounding system based on various parameters, this research presents a procedure for assessing the effectiveness of WTG lightning protection system with a focus on the grounding system. It is identified that the effectiveness of the grounding system can be improved by proper design of earth electrodes, optimum soil stratification, and selecting low resistivity soil sites. Finally, various earth electrode configurations are evaluated to identify the better electrode configuration for WTG grounding system. This thesis provides an in-depth analysis of WTG grounding systems to protect WTGs from lightning strikes. The contributions of this research will help wind farm architects to design effective grounding systems leading to effective lightning protection systems. Finally, the contributions will help to increase the adoption of wind power, resulting in more renewable energy generation. The outcome of this research can be realized to reduce the downtime of WTGs by incorporating the effectiveness of lightning protection system component into the wind farm optimization process. Also, a generalized procedure for calculating the minimum length of earth electrodes for all the soil models can be developed in the future.</p>

show abstract

Thunderstorm characteristics favouring downward and upward lightning to wind turbines

Cited by 20 publications

References 91 publications

Meteorological Aspects of Self‐Initiated Upward Lightning at the Säntis Tower (Switzerland)

Meteorological Aspects of Self‐Initiated Upward Lightning at the Säntis Tower (Switzerland)

On the conditions for winter lightning at the Eagle Nest Tower (2537 m asl) during the Cerdanya-2017 field experiment

Design and Analysis of Earthing System for Wind Turbine Generators from Lightning Discharge Currents

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About