Abstract
Currently, lightning phenomenon, mechanisms, and impacts on lives and infrastructures have been satisfactorily decoded and studied. Sound knowledge of lightning parameters is available in international literature. Yet, there are few studies referring to lightning statistics such as the number of flashes over an area, current amplitude distribution, etc., except for official documentation from national weather services, perhaps because of the stochastic nature of lightning. This work presents full recorded data for lightning flashes over wind farms distributed at the Hellenic territory. The data come from real time measurements at wind farm stations from 2011 to 2020 and concern number of CG flashes and lightning current amplitude. They are statistically processed and analyzed and contain useful information regarding the lightning characteristics of various geographic regions all over the country. Furthermore, the study displays data from field measurements of ground resistance at wind turbines and highlights techniques of designing and enhancing grounding systems of wind turbines for given lightning protection level (LPL). The present study, therefore, provides stakeholders with useful data and noteworthy conclusions about lightning occurrence and characteristics in Greece in order to make informed decisions on the various project stages, such as selection of the wind farm site, proper and in-depth risk assessment, and investment in safety measures for personnel and equipment.
Highlights
The main goal of this study is to present a general view of the lightning activity over the Hellenic territory, based on a long-term recording and observation of lightning strikes upon wind turbines, providing engineers with significant data about the frequency and the polarity of flashes as well as the magnitude of the lightning current per geographical region, season, year, and the examined time period in total
The results ofcoordinates a detailed statistical analysis foramplitude the frequency of lightof the lightning flash
The recording system recognizes the type of lightning ning occurrence and the mean amplitude of the lightning flashes at the considered wind flash, e.g., cloud-to-cloud, intracloud, cloud-to-ground and gives information about the parks are presented
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Each situation depending on the lightning current parameters can cause injury to people and livestock, physical damage due to mechanical and thermal effects (fire, explosion, chemical release), and failure of internal systems due to lightning electromagnetic pulse (LEMP) All these categories are closely related to the present case study for wind farms investigated in this paper, as they may lead to one of the loss categories specified by IEC [2], i.e., loss of human life, loss of service to public, and loss of economic value. The main goal of this study is to present a general view of the lightning activity over the Hellenic territory, based on a long-term recording and observation of lightning strikes upon wind turbines, providing engineers with significant data about the frequency and the polarity of flashes as well as the magnitude of the lightning current per geographical region, season, year, and the examined time period in total. The lightning activity of the region is taken into consideration only during the risk assessment procedure and the design of the lightning protection system
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