WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW IN PURCHASING

A PROTECTION SYSTEM AGAINST LIGHTNING

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by CHANDIMA GOMES
Lecturer in Physics and Chartered Physicist
(UK) University of Colombo
If you are concerned about protecting your
building from lightning you can approach either a
qualilied engineer or an engineering company
which provides lightning protection. Some companies undertake only certain parts of the lightning protection system (e.g. air termination only,
earthing only, surge arresters only, designing
only, installation only etc.) However it is advisable to take the entire protection system from one
company as far as possible.
A person who pays a company or a person for
a lightning protection system has the right to
know what they get for their money. Thus, the
customer should ask for the following information from the pertinent party.
1. A complete sketch of the protection system.

2. The level of protection (the probability of

failure/success of the system).
3. What standards the protection system is
complying with. (International standards, national standards etc.)
4. How and how often the system will be rou-

tinely checked?
5. Who

will

take the responsibility of these rou-

tinely investigations (especially important if more

than one company is invoived in the protection,
design and installation)?
6. The total life span of the system.
7. How often the system will be upgraded?

8. Under what terms and conditions the damaged protective devices

will

be replaced?

The installation of a protective system alone

will not help much to solve your lightning

caused

problems. The system should be maintained properly and checked routinely. Each time after a protected building is lightning struck, a qualified person should check the whole system at the earliest
and replace the protective devices, which may be
damaged. It is also recommended to perform this
test after a severe thunderstorm pass over the
installation (even if the building is not reported to
be srruck by lightning).

Why do you need lightning protection?

A direct lightning hit to any given building is

rare compared to the total number of buildings in
a given area. However, once struck the outcome
may be even the total destruction of the building.
. On the other hand damages due to lightning that
strike power and communication lines and also
due to induced voltages are much more abundant.
Furthermore, lightning may intervene repetitively
with your installation. That is, you may get losses
due to lightning more than once. Thus, starting
from the total destruction of buildings due to
explosion or fire which are consequences ofdirect
hits, lightning may affect you in many orher ways:
Permanent or temporary damage to electronics
which in turn cause, production standstill, erroneous production flow, mal-operation of certain
sections of the industry, out-of-order emergency
and waming systems, loss of valuable software

and data and even chaos among employees.

Above all lightning may cause personal hazards,
which may be irreparable.