Performance Evaluation of Early Streamer Emission Lightning Air Terminal

Studies have claimed that ESE (Early Streamer Emission) air terminals offer a vastly increased zone of protection over that of traditional lightning rods (Franklin rods) by causing the emission of an upward streamer/leader: The upward streamer/leader will propagate towards the tip of the downward leader at an early stage in the attachment process.. This paper shows the results of a performance evaluation test of a particular type of the ESE air terminal (called "ElecHippo") with a simple rod tested at the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI). The corona emission current of the ElecHippo made by Yong-Jin Enterprise Corp. has also been measured at the Occupational Safety & Health Research Institute (OSHRI). The results show that the ElecHippo meets the French standard of NFC 17-102-1995. The results also verify the ESE performance by measuring the ion emission current generated in the discharge electrode gap as a function of the capacitance and inductance of the equipped devices. Finally, we propose a new method for grounding the system to reduce the lightning damage by combining the ESE air terminal, the early discharge earth plate, the lightning strike recorder and the surge protection device.