Effective Length of Counterpoises Connected to Wind Turbine Foundation

Abstract

Many failures of wind turbine blades and electrical equipment due to powerful lightning strikes have occurred. The lightning-induced wind turbine failures that have occurred in recent years can be classified into two main categories. The first is a mechanical component failure. The second is a failure or malfunction of electric or electronic equipment inside or around the wind turbine due to an increase in the potential of the wind turbine grounding system or the electromagnetic induction caused by the lightning strike. In the latter case, the equipment often fails owing to the increase in the potential of the grounding system, the method of suppressing the potential rise by laying a grounding wire vertically or horizontally to the wind turbine foundation is adopted. We propose an empirical expression for the effective length of counterpoises connected to a large grounding electrode such as a wind turbine foundation, and verify the expression using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method.