Lightning Surge Analysis And Protection System Design For Typical Mobile Phone Tower

Abstract

Lightning is not only a serious weather hazard but also it has fascinated and excited humans for as long as they have watched the skies. It has been estimated that the earth is struck by 100 lightning bolts every second. Now a days lightning hazard is an important issue of major interest for the engineers and architects while designing the electric equipment & tall structures. Analyses of lightning surge characteristics deserve much more importance for designing protection scheme for communication tower against lightning. If a return stroke hit upon any metallic structure such as communication tower suited on multi-storied building’s roof, the lightning transient over voltage will propagate through the columns, beams and other metallic structures of the building. If proper protection is not provided against lightning, the building, electric equipment and also human being living inside the building will be affected. Obviously this matter has been deserving much more attention for public safety. Modern power and communication system includes many electronic appliances for controlling and information processing purpose. It is essential to operate communication systems utilizing these electronic appliances. In this research the lightning surge response e.g, nature of voltage, current, surge impedance, electric field distribution and effect of direct stroke in another word the lightning surge characteristics on the multi-storied building and communication tower have been analysed. Induced effect of direct stroke on electronic equipment inside the building on different floors has also been analysed. Two different methods are used to analyzed the surge characteristics. Firstly Numerical Electromagnetic Code (NEC-2) is used as simulation tool for finding the surge response. Secondly ATP Draw (Alternative Transient Program) has been used for finding the surge characteristics. In this research IEEE model, Pinceti model and Fernandes-Diaz model of MOV type surge arrester are simulated with ATP-EMTP modified their parameters to determine the optimum values for designing proper protection scheme for the typical mobile phone towers.