Lightning is a bright flash of electricity produced by a thunderstorm. It's an electrical current.
As clouds form in the sky, the water droplets on top of the clouds turn into ice. These small bits of ice collide with each other, building up an electrical charge. Eventually, the whole cloud fills up with an electrical charge. The positive charge, as they are lighter forms at the top of the cloud while the negative charge sinks at the bottom of the cloud. And as we all know opposites attract, the positive charge builds up above the ground, right beneath the cloud.
When the positive charge from the ground connects with the cloud negative charge a spark occurs; lightning strikes.
We all have heard stories and seen pictures of the damage and strange effects lightning strike has on industrial facilities.
Lightning protection has become ideal for every facility; over years of research and development, we have learned one thing – lightning is a powerful force and we are a long way from taming it!
- A single bolt can generate up to 40,000 amps
- It can be as hot as 90,032-degree Fahrenheit
- Lightning strikes the earth 100 times a second, somewhere
- Annually, lightning causes at least 26000 fires with damages of 5-6 billion dollars in the USA alone
Lightning Eliminators and Consultant, Inc. (LEC) advises that you consider a multi-pronged lightning protection approach rather than solely rely on the Franklin or grounding rod. The Franklin rod system, which has been around for more than 250 years attracts lightning to the area where the lightning may have been terminated well outside the protected zone. In our view, using traditional lightning protection only, creates potential problems for industrial facilities.
On the other hand, our DAS lightning protection method lowers the static field in the protected area long enough for the lightning strike to terminate outside the protected zone.
Clients who choose our system for their facility lightning protection are those that cannot tolerate any collection of lightning within the desired protection zone.
Our list of clients includes Exxon Mobil, Shell Oil, Chevron, Valero Refining, BASF, FedEx, UPS, etc. Most of our clients are repeat clients often with multiple facilities in different geographical locations across the world.
LEC is a smart risk-reduction choice for critical systems’ lightning protection.