MTO Ltd - EvoDis® Lightning Dissipation System

Grounding system, which is the most important component of all electrical systems, is also the basic element of lightning protection systems. A grounding system with low resistance and impedance, which is crucial for lightning protection methods that collect lightning, is also extremely important for EvoDis® Lightning Dissipation System to offer high performance.

Grounding system is a group of conductors and the electrodes with very low resistance and impedance. It serves for discharging the over-potential of an electrical system without damaging the system's connected devices or humans . All of these conductors and electrodes are buried under the ground level and therefore, this system is called "grounding system".

As well as any electrical system, lightning protection systems also require good grounding. Lightning attracting systems use the grounding system to transmit the current of collected lightning to the ground. On the other hand, a grounding system with low resistivity values is used by lightning dissipating systems to collect the charges from the ground and dissipate above as fast as possible. EvoDis® Lightning Dissipation System also requires a good grounding system as its similars. For a proper operation, EvoDis® system needs the resistance of 5 ohms and below for the grounding system.

_Grounding System Components

Electrode:
Made of copper or galvanized materials, electrodes may be either a rod, a mesh/grid or a plate. Dimensions are determined with international codes. For various applications, grounding system may have a number of electrodes with different layouts.

Conductor:
Conductor may be in form of stranded copper, solid copper or flat copper strap. Dimensions are determined with international codes. On the other hand, grounding conductor must be larger than the “down conductor” which makes the connection between grounding system and lightning protection system.

Bonding:
Metallic parts called “clamps” or a special welding type called “exothermic welding” are used to bond the conductors to electrodes. Eventhough the dimensions of the clamps are determined by international codes and are large enough to make a good connection between conductor and electrodes, exothermic welding is recommended in order to have even a better connection.

_EvoDis® Lightning Dissipation System and Grounding

Grounding Systems are used for lightning attracting systems to transmit the current of collected lightning to the ground where EvoDis® Lightning Dissipation System uses grounding system to collect the charges from the ground and transmit them to the other components of the system in the fastest way possible. For instance; a gsm tower under a storm cloud is surrounded with positive charges and those charges move up to the tower after a while. At that moment, it is needed to have the positive charges carried up to the tower and transmitted to EvoDis® Lightning Dissipation System in order to dissipate them through the system and block the formation of the positive charged branches. A good grounding system accelerates this process and increases the performance of EvoDis® Lightning Dissipation System.

EvoDis® Lightning Dissipation System requires a grounding system with a maximum resistance value of 5 ohms. This is also the value demanded by the insurance companies. When the resistance gets over 5 ohms, EvoDis® system's performance is adversely affected and loses the specialization of dissipating lightning.