Five-Year Performance of an ESE Lightning Protection System for a Large Scale PV Power Plant in Thailand

This article presents a five-year performance review of an early streamer emission (ESE) air terminal lightning protection system for a large scale PV power plant in Thailand. The comparison effect of a Franklin lightning protection system and the ESE lightning protection system was analyzed for the PV power plant. The ESE lightning protection system was selected to be implemented in the PV power plant. The capacity of the PV power plant studied was 8 MWp on an area of 150,000 square meters in the Nong Ya Plong district, Phetchaburi province, Western Thailand. A Franklin lightning rod type was also designed to be implemented in this PV power plant. The Franklin lightning rod type comprised 122 pieces but the ESE lightning rod type consisted of only 11 pieces. The conceptual design of the Franklin rod type followed the standard of the Council of Engineers, Thailand, and the ESE lightning rod type followed the NFC17102 standard of France. The estimated cost of installation was a key comparison to select the lightning protection system; the total installation cost of the Franklin lightning rod type was USD 197,363.80 and the ESE lightning rod type was USD 44,338.06. The lightning system was applied to the lightning arrester in the power plant to provide good protection, in which the balance of the pole to the mounting position is required to optimize the system performance. The result of the simulation also showed that the shading effects of the Franklin rod type were greater than the ESE rod type. The installation cost of the Franklin lightning rod type was 4.45 times more expensive than the ESE lightning rod type. Therefore, the ESE lightning protection system was selected to be implemented in the PV power plant. From the recorded data of the five-year performance of the ESE lightning protection system (2016-2020), there were three occurrences of a lightning strike on the PV power plant. The ESE lightning protection system effectively protected and prevented the lightning strike to the PV power plant. This study can help and support with the selection of a lightning system for the protection of large scale PV power plants in the future.