Investigation of Blade Receptor Number on the Lightning Attachment Behavior of Wind Turbine

Abstract

The blade receptor plays an essential role in the lightning protection effect of wind turbines (WTs). In this investigation, five categories of WT lightning protection systems, with various pairs (two, three, four, six, and eight) of receptors on the blades, are evaluated by reduced-scale laboratory discharge experiments as well as by full-scale electric field calculations, from which the lightning attachment distribution and the electric field intensity of the WTs are obtained. Experimental results indicate that the lightning attachment probability of the blade insulation part decreases as the number of receptors increases, and that when the receptor number reaches four or more, an approximately complete protection for the WT blade can be achieved. Results also show that, for the WT model with two–six pairs of receptors on each blade, the lightning interception efficiency shows a trend of ascending with the increase of the receptor number, whereas an opposite trend is shown for the ones with six–eight pairs of receptors. Additionally, obtained simulation results show that as the number of receptors increases, the maximum electric field intensity shows a general decreasing trend. Finally, a theoretical analysis is carried out to explain the underlying mechanism of the observed phenomenon here.