Aspect of Home Electric Appliances Damages due to Lightning and Future Problem

This paper shows the investigation results on the change of lightning damages of home electric appliances, which has been done 4 times from 1987 through 2006. The rate of damaged households out of monitors (%/household/year) was around 0.6% in 1980's as well as 1990's. On the other hand, it is over 2% in 2006, when the society has become the fully developed information one. The rapid increase of lightning damages is attributed to the wide spread of home electric appliances with wires for telecommunication such as personal computers, new type telephones and facsimile machines as well as those with grounding wires such as water heaters.