Lightning Exposure of Wind Turbines

This paper applies the electrogeometric model of lightning exposure to a wind turbine to compute its risk of damage due to a direct lightning strike in an area of known lightning flash density. For a typical 45 m wind turbine, the probability of being struck by a downward negative flash, as predicted by the model, agrees with the observed lightning strike data for wind turbines of comparable size in Denmark. Moreover, statistical distribution of the stroke current, which is useful in turbine design, can be derived from the model