Lightning is a transient discharge of static electricity that serves to re-establish electrostatic equilibrium usually within a storm environment. From eye-view, light can occur within cloud, cloud to cloud and between cloud-to-ground. Lightning can provide a spectacular display of light on a dark night. However, this awesome show of nature can bring fierce destruction than many other natural disasters. The destruction can either bring direct effects or indirect effects. The direct effects are from resistive (ohmic) heating, arcing and burning. Whereas, the indirect effects are more probable, which include capacitive, inductive and magnetic behaviour. Lightning can induce fires, damage electrical installation and more importantly it kills.

According to US National Lightning Safety Institute, Malaysia is ranked third in the world in terms of the number of lightning activities with approximately 180 to 260 thunderstorm days per year, behind Colombia and Indonesia.

Malaysian lightning expert, Prof Ir. Dr Mohd Zainal Abidin Ab Kadir from Institute of Power Engineering at University Tenaga Nasional said, the lightning strikes in Malaysia have reportedly caused 125 deaths and 157 injuries between 2008 and 2017, coming to about 12.5 lightning-related fatal cases per year.

Customer challenges:

Any structure or building is at risk of being damaged by lightning strikes if it’s not properly protected. The risk of getting struck increases the higher the building is, and the damage poses by a strike is tremendous. It will cause a structural damage to the building. An example is as reported by New Straits Times on July 17th, 2019, a Petronas Distillation Tower had caught fire after it was struck by lightning.

Other than structural damage to the building, lightning strike can also cause voltage spikes. Machines and electrical equipment operate within their operating voltage, but the voltage spike or transient overvoltage caused by lightning strike could pose huge damage to electrical equipment or machines, which could not handle such high voltage.

The voltage spike could occur miles away from the location where the lightning strike occurs, which means that equipment inside buildings with low risk of getting struck are also at risk. A case was reported by New Straits Times in Pendang, Kedah in June 2019 where a woman was injured when a kitchen appliance explodes due to lightning strike.

Low-level buildings and even open space areas are also subject to lightning strikes. This phenomenon occurs due to the lack of tall structures within the area. Fatal injuries have been reported in Setia Alam on March 2019 by Malay Mail, in which a civilian was killed while four others injured in the open field area by a lightning strike.

PROTECT YOU FROM LIGHTNING

It is very important to properly protected from lightning strikes and lightning surges/transient overvoltage. Merely installing a structural lightning protection system on the roof doesn’t provide guarantee that the building and the machines, equipment inside are safe.

A conventional lightning protection system is recommended to be installed to protect your building to conduct lightning current thru down conductor safely to the ground. Down conductor system helps to reduce damage inflicted by lightning current flowing through the lightning protection conductor path. Greater number of down conductors possess better ability to split the current and as direct as possible from the air terminal to earth chamber.

The earth termination system function as dispersion of the lightning current harmlessly into ground. A complete risk assessment shall be conducted to determine the lightning protection level (1-4) subject to the few factors, loss of human life, loss of essential public services, loss of cultural heritage & loss of economic.

Benefit

Proper design and installation of lightning protection system could rest assured that all possible danger points are taken into consideration, and well protected.

Protection on the electrical could avoid the possible downtimes especially in the production operation. Prevention on the risk of capital loss in buying new machines if there is any incident happen. Plus, the operation productivity would not been affected when lightning strike happen.

Lightning protection system also protects the human life by reducing the risk of accidents happened caused by voltage spikes such as explosion and fire.

Made of pure copper, also available in aluminium. Can be fitted into standard air terminal base or into ridge saddle.

ATEG high conductivity copper tape is annealed for ultimate ductility and has radiused edges. It suitable for a range of earthing (grounding) and lightning protection applications.

These pits provide access to earth rods and the corresponding connections to earthing grids. Suitable for most industrial applications.

Its tested high tensile strength allows it to be driven into high depths to increase earth resistivity value. Can be coupled on both ends using rod coupling.

DC Tape Clip has 25 X 3mm of conductor size and the material is copper.

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