Webinar «Methods of active influence on lightning strike. How ESE lightning rods are effective and feasible?», page 3

Упрочнение промежутка – gap reinforcement

Крутой короткий импульс напряжения может затормозить встречный лидер, а не ускорить его – Steep short voltage pulse can slow down the counter leader, not to speed it up

Largely speaking, the explanation was under our feet. The matter was this. Our institute had been working on one task many years ago. We wanted to see what would happen with high-voltage insulation, that is long air gaps if a strong and short high-voltage pulse would attack the front pulse of about 200-250 ms, it means the front which we are talking about. What did this attack do? Did it increase the gap strength or reduce it? Or maybe left it unchanged? The registrations were the most modern there. The laboratory was skilled in registration technique. We saw when such a pulse was attacking in the gap; there was a powerful streamer flash which emitted an immense charge, about 7 mCl into the gap. And when this charge was dropped, then the electric field on the top of this electrode dropped drastically and all ionization processes were finished. They were finished not looking at the fact that the voltage continued to grow. And it was required to raise the voltage up to 20% so the charge would go again and the gap was punctured. So the short managing voltage pulse not only did not increase he probability of a strike into the electrode, it reduces it. And this reduction of a number of strikes into an active electrode was observed by Reason, New Mexico and Kuprienko in his experiments held near Saint-Petersburg in 2013 and 2014. You see? The result turns out to be very simple and obvious.

This reality has another moment, which I can't miss. You see? Sale of ESE lightning rods is a very profitable product. Whether we want it or not, but the authorities which should not interfere into this business, they still interfere. It is a letter which I received several years ago, it is signed by the head of GosEnergoNadzor. In the letter I am notified to notify you that Mr. Head allows the use of ESE lightning rods of "FOREND" company on the territory of the Russian Federation. And he will make it on the base of the certificate of the company mentioned here. And this certification is made on the base of these French test methods which I showed you. And these test methods to the estimation of efficient action of these lightning rods do not have any correlation. Further in this email there are addresses where you can buy a lightning rod. I think I made myself clear. My point is based on the experimental and theoretical research which was held by a large community of specialists in Russia and other countries.

Questions and answers

— Dear colleagues, please ask questions if you have any of them. At the present moment, Eduard Meerovich, there is a discussion on the topic is it possible or impossible to use this product in the European countries and in the USA and what important objects already have this lightning protection. They say, that the building of the European parliament, Notre-Dame de Paris have this kind of protection.

— You know what. I can place lightning rods anywhere. Please pay attention to the following thing. Notre-Dame de Paris is more than 500 years old. And for more than 500 years it has been existing without ESE lightning rods. And the fact that these lightning rods are installed on Notre-Dame de Paris doesn't prove anything in the part of their efficiency. Nothing happened without them and nothing will happen with them. You see the argumentation we have and which I am waiting from the companies is as follows. The object was standing without any lightning protection and nothing happened. I will put my lightning rods and maybe nothing will happen too, but it is not the proof of the product efficiency. It is possible to prove the efficiency of the product only comparing it to some analogue. If there is a comparison - we can discuss. But, for some reason, no company tries to show statistics of using ESE lightning rods compared to conventional ones. One of the people I am communicating on this work and who represents the company organizing the seminar asked me the same question twice. Is there no scientific article which would prove the efficiency of ESE lightning rods? I underline - a scientific article. I don't know any scientific article of that kind. If some of you has this article, please show it to me. So the question is: "we sold 68 000 of them" and so what? How many packages of hydrolate were sold? And how much medicine for losing weight is being sold today and advertised on the Internet? Is it the proof of this medicine efficiency? Quantity gives nothing. Only qualified comparison does. And there is no comparison now.

— Yes, your today's report was comprehensive, because there are no certain questions at the moment. The only question o the previous webinars. If there are no questions, I can ask. It concerns step voltage, appearing at a lightning strike, and how long it stays on the ground - step voltage?

— I understand that the question has no relation to ESE lightning rods, but I am happy to answer it. The matter is in the following. Step voltage exists for the time during which lightning current flows. If you have one lightning current pulse, then the average duration of this pulse is equal to 0,5 and it lays somewhere in the range of 100 ms. And in 200 ms from steel voltage, there remains about 15-20% of its value. But if lightning are multi-component, several current pulses will flow either by the same channel and in case of impact, there will appear inter-component pauses with corresponding intervals. The average pause between the components is 70 ms. And the next step voltage will appear with the pause of 70 ms from each outsurge. Collectively, the ultimate number of these flash goes up to 30, and the summary duration of all of them - about 1 s. It means during 1 second in an ultimate unfavourable case a person can be under a dozen, or two dozens of pulse voltages. That's the situation.

— Please repeat the information one more time, is it possible to consider the reliability of an ESE lightning rod similar to the reliability of the passive one?

— What I am saying? First of all, what advertising prospects say? The advertising prospects tell if you put an ESE lightning rod on your tower, to the rod lightning rod, the protection zone of this lighting rod increases in 5 times. The advertising of the companies tells this. What does our Russian legislation say? It tells nothing about ESE lightning rods. What does the International Electrotechnical Commission Standard say? Nothing, either. It is silently supposed that if you put an ESE lightning rod on your device, you have to calculate protection zone of this lightning rod as if you don't have any ESE lightning rod at all. According to our legislation, there are no ESE lightning rods at all. I start to doubt that, because the experiments held with the ESE lightning rods manufactured today say that their protection zone can reduce due to the effect which I showed you. No legislation, neither ours, nor the legislation of the International Electro technical Commission, nor the American standard has any orders on that issue. What I tell is my opinion.

— And the question. Can you comment on the protection zones by the opinion of ESE lightning protection manufacturers, where did they come from, to your mind?

— I would like to see some document from which I understood this method. I don't have it. You know, it is the style of some European regulatory documents. For example, International Electro technical Commission - IEC published its standard 62-305 in which the rolling sphere method is actively promoted. This rolling sphere method is getting into the Russian Legislation, whether we want it or not. It seems it will be advertised soon. There are absolutely no proofs under this method. I had a chance to meet one of the authors of this document and I asked him if we could show me his work with the base positions of this method. He answered he could not. But it is very beautiful to use rolling sphere radius. But beauty is not the point in this case. I don't know, I can't prove there these figures came from.

— While we are waiting for the questions, I will address to all the participants. You will see the link in the chat, please fill in the questionnaires. You can express your wishes there, ask your questions and put a mark to the today's event. Thank you for your participation.

— I thank everyone for the participation. You know if was quite hard for me. I tried to be very objective. But it's up to you to judge if I did it well. But the materials I operated with, are inviolable. It means all the experiments I referred to, were done in series with the number of measurements counted by thousands. The results of the experiment cause no doubt. The interpretation may cause doubts. But it's a natural thing, is not it? It cannot be any other way. But it is a fact that there is no direct proof of efficiency of ESE lightning rods. And it is also a fact that there are proofs of doubts in their efficiency. And we had to study that. That if why I am very much looking forward to meeting creators of ESE lightning rods. If this meeting takes place and the results are put on the Internet, I think it will become clearer. But I have no doubt about what I've told you today. Thanks again for your attention!

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