This article was posted 10/04/2010 and is most likely outdated.

Lightning Protection Failure of the Collection Volume Method
 

 

Topic - Lightning Protection
Subject - Lightning Protection - Failure of the Collection Volume Method

October 4, 2010
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Lightning Protection
Failure of the Collection Volume Method and
Attempts of the ESE Lightning Rod Industry to Resurrect It

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ESE (Early Streamer Emission) lightning rods are claimed to have a much larger stroke collection range than that of Franklin rods, so that a single ESE device would be able to protect a whole building.  The economic viability of ESE devices rests on this claim as the cost of an ESE device is more than 100 times larger than that of a Franklin rod.  Independent lightning scientists have repeatedly stated that ESE theory is invalid.
 
Vendors' attempt to get NFPA to issue a standard for ESE devices failed after a decade-long dispute which involved court battles.  Since then, some vendors switched to using the CVM (Collection Volume Method) to justify their claim that a single air terminal can protect the whole building.  The CVM is an air terminal placement method that exaggerates the stroke collection range of an air terminal regardless of its type.  Hence it presumably also applies to Franklin rods but the vendors only apply it to ESE devices.

Vendors previously attempted to get the CVM in the lightning protection standards of Australia/New Zealand and NFPA (National Fire Protection Association of USA), but they failed.  The vendors have since targeted IEEE Standard 998 which deals with protecting substations against direct lightning strokes.  By controlling the voting process within Working Group (WG) D5 which is responsible for Standard 998, the vendors succeeded in getting the CVM in the draft standard. 

The attached paper by Dr. Abdul Mousa (Consultant, retired from BC Hydro) addresses the above issue and is directed to the Vice Chairman of the WG.  It is a new paper which shows the invalidity of the CVM, and is written in basic terms so that almost any person can understand: the contradictions between the CVM and field observations.

Click here to read the full article (314 KB)



 
 

 

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Comments
  • The alternative lightning protection effrots have been routinely met with scorn and ridicule by academia and people with lot of suffixes and prefixes around their names. I attribute this to the ABB synndrome, as in Anything But Benjamin.

    Fortunatelly some of us rationalists have found merit in ACTUAL performance, despite the unexplainable and unexplicable science behind it.

    Lo and behold, just in a recent success the same tools - ionizers - were used to repeatedly create rain in the desert of Abu Dhabi. Max Planc Institute stood by to verify.

    So ionizers DO work and capable to produce LARGE scale weather events. Hmmmm.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1343470/Have-scientists-discovered-create-downpours-desert.html

    Laszlo Weress
    Reply to this comment

  • Sir,This forum is genuinely concerned with public safety. It seems clear from the paper written by Dr.Mousa that he is also driven by the same motive. However,the flaws in another of his own paper on substation shielding were pointed out by Dr.chaudhary in his book ''Electromagnetic Transients In Power Systems 2/e (Publisher: Phi Learning Pvt Ltd )''.It is not known whether Dr.Mousa had made good his own paper on substation shielding subsequently or defended it.Thanks.

    T.M.Haja Sahib
    Reply to this comment

  • It is tempting to think that ,as the lightning leader approaches a building close enough during a thunderstorm and upward streamers emerge from the sharp ponits of the outside surface of the building,the leader is likely to be attached to the streamer nearest to it.Refer to lines in the paper ''Specifically, an upward leader is induced from a tall tower when a nearby cloud-to-cloud or cloud to ground lightning strike occurs. If a downward lightning stroke occurs while the above unrelated upward leader is still conductive, then it will terminate at its tip instead of striking the peak of the tower itself.....'' from which it is apparent that the author did not want to admit the case that cloud to ground lightning leader could attach with the upward leader from the building in the first place.Is it because no photos demonstrate it? Thanks.

    T.M.HAJA SAHIB
    Reply to this comment

  • lightning "strokes"?

    J.C.
    Reply to this comment

  • Somehow I don't think we've heard the last word on the ESE system. I have a feeling that there is something beneficial about it. The ESE units may not provide the "same" ligntning protection as a conventional Faraday cage but I'd like to know exactly what the benefits of the ESE really are. If we knew that, we could apply ESE to the appropriate LP task. Do ESE's fail? What are the statistics? Do Faraday Cages fail? What are those stats? Seems to me that the fire/LP damage insurance co's wolud like to have this information.

    Wyatt
    Reply to this comment


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