Wind farm grounding system design for transient currents

摘要

Wind turbines are often very high structures that are usually installed in high keraunic level areas. The keraunic level is the number of storm days per year. Therefore, wind farms are very vulnerable to lightning discharge. The damage due to a lightning strike can be reduced if the high current is quickly conducted to the ground. To date, wind turbine grounding system designs have been based on prior experience, without accurately studying transient grounding system behavior. In this work, typical wind farm grounding system geometries are analyzed in the context of lightning strikes.