Lightning Revisited [RE-wrenches]

[Lawrence Elliott]

Ray.
I second your comments on grounding to the well casing.
I also have never grounded DC neg and have never had a lightning strike.
I believe we are installing in essentially the same desert "soils".
NEC can argue all they want but our soils have esentially zero
conductivity and 8' rods pounded into the ground are useless and a waste
of money and effort.
A well casing gets down and dirty with its bonding to old mother nature
and it works. Period.

I have yet to have a lighting problem with a floated system.
I am not even a big fan of AC grounding of current carrying conductors.
It is my opinion they only serve to supply one more shock hazard.
I would love to see an article in HOME POWER with someone explaining the
virtues of grounding a current carrying conductor and using only pure
logic and physics to prove their point.
I would love to be proven wrong.

Europe does not ground as far as I know except for lighning and I don't
see millions of Germans going up in electrical smoke.

Larry Elliott


----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Walters" <remotech at taosnm.com>
To: <RE-wrenches at topica.com>
Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 12:08 PM
Subject: RE: Lightning Revisited [RE-wrenches]


> >
> >I'm glad we are continuing the dialogue on lightning.  It would be
good to
> >arrive at definitive answers to this ongoing question. >
> >Drake,
> >
> >
> I regularly service systems that are over 15 years old here in
Taos,and it
> is becoming clear : PV systems that ground to steel cased wells are
NOT
> experiencing Lightning damage. Traditional grounding methods (ie.,
tying
> all grounds together, or bonding one of the DC conductors) appear to
be
> acceptable.
> However if the grounding system does NOT include bonding to a steel
cased
> well, and all grounds are tyed together and DC neg. is grounded as per
NEC,
> I have had several dangerous incidents with lightning induced surges.
The
> damaged list includes: 2 C40s, 2 Heliotrope CCs, 1 DR inverter, 2 SW
> series, Several analog and digital meters, Diode and circuit boards on
a
> Kohler generator,and a Windseeker 503. More importantly, a customer
> received a shock from a nearby strike while using her laptop.
> I have begun not grounding DC neg in my systems, because I have seen
NO
> lightning problems in floating neg DC systems so far, as long as the
PV
> frames are grounded.
> I would consider seperating a wind tower's ground from the main PV
> equipment ground, again IF I didn't have a steel cased well.
> Also, all my other grounding methods didn't save the day without the
steel
> cased well: 300 ft of stranded Cu buried outside of the conduit, six
6"
> steel poles in the ground 4 ft, chassis grounds, UFER grounds, 5/8" Cu
clad
> rods,Delta LAs, Polyphasors, etc. all tied together and we still had
$1000s
> of damage.
>
> Bottom Line:
> Steel cased well = lightning protection
>
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