Parametric and statistical investigations of lightning-induced voltages on overhead lines by exact analytical solutions

•Analysis of lightning-induced voltages on overhead lines is carried out.•Exact analytical solutions are used for parametric and a statistical analysis.•Role of various parameters affecting the induced voltages is analyzed.•Parametric fitting distributions are checked to fit peak voltage simulated data. In this paper, which is an extended version of the paper presented by the authors at the 34th International Conference on Lightning Protection (ICLP 2018), a parametric and a statistical analysis of lightning-induced voltages on overhead lines has been carried out by means of exact analytical solutions, for both step-function and linearly rising channel-base currents. The role played by the various parameters affecting the induced voltages has been analyzed. Further, the statistical investigations has allowed us to identify the parametric statistical distributions which best fit the data obtained by simulations. Based on this statistical investigation, an analysis of the lightning performance of an overhead line has been carried out too.