A CRITICAL REVIEW OF NONCONVENTIONAL APPROACHES TO LIGHTNING PROTECTION

The conventional technique for the lightning protection of structures is described in the U.S. National Standard, NFPA 780, and in many other national and international lightning protection standards. Two nonconventional techniques, known generically as “lightning elimination” and “early streamer emission,” are claimed by their proponents to be superior to the conventional lightning protection technique. We review the literature on these nonconventional approaches as well as the pertinent lightning literature and conclude that the suggested superiority of the nonconventional techniques over the conventional method is not supported by the available experimental data or by theory.