Effective Lightning Protection Systems Don’t Attract Lightning, they Eliminate it!
Most lightning protection systems are interception systems that don’t reduce the odds that lightning will strike a facility. Instead, they mitigate the risks of a lightning strike by controlling and trying to disperse the energy they create. The system does more than just capture the energy of the lightning strike. It must bring the energy to the ground without impacting the building’s structure or the electrical equipment inside. Lightning can also generate a significant amount of heat. The protection system must minimize the impact of this heat from the strike so that it doesn’t create a fire or melt building components. It all starts with the strike termination devices or lightning rod / air terminal. Lightning is predictable in that it prefers to strike the highest point of a structure and prefers to hit a conductive metal. The rods create a preferred point of strike, thus the strike termination device is the highest point of the building. Further, cables run from the termination