Assessing lightning damage to buildings and structures
#Wind turbines, #Wind turbine blade, #Lightning damage, #Root Cause Assessment, #International standards
Challenge
Even though lightning standards exist, specifying how to design, verify and install protection solutions for building and other technical installations, lightning damages still occur. Settling a dispute, or placing the liability can be difficult, and here the profound experience of Upvious plays a key role.
A wind turbine operator experienced lightning damages to wind turbine blades on wind turbines claimed compliant to the international standard IEC 61400-24. The discussion quickly turned into a matter of liability, and Upvious had to investigate the protection system installed, explore the potential failure modes and the lightning environment at site, and prepare an objective Root Cause Analysis of the incident.
Upvious contribution
The customer shared field inspection reports by the operator, damage reports by the OEM and independent service provider, and additional 3rd party views on the topic by various technical consultants – including data from Lightning Location Systems, etc.
With more than 20 years of professional and industrial background in lightning protection of wind turbines, Upvious digested the materials and wrote a detailed report with an evaluation of the applied protection system, a thorough explanation of the likely steps and causes of the failures observed, putting everything into the context of the international standards for which the blades were claimed compliant to.
Results
The report aided the discussion, not by pointing fingers against the OEM, or other specific stakeholders, but rather by presenting factual information and evidence to fully understand the lightning interaction with the turbines. By having indisputable facts at hand, the Owner, OEM and insurance company came to an agreement on the distribution of liability – and all parties became more aware of what to discuss prior to the next wind turbine design/project.
