State of the art Surge Protection Device Research and its Application to Photovoltaic Plants

This paper identifies and reviews the current research on surge protection devices and their application to PV plants. A single direct lightning strike can generate a ground potential rise, causing erratic surge protection device behaviour. Additionally, the same direct lightning strike will induce currents in the DC wiring loops throughout the PV plant resulting in fast transients propagating through the DC cabling. Present research on surge protection devices and PV plants is limited and often implements simplistic earth termination system representations in their models, neglecting the impact of ground potential rise and induced currents. Other research attempts focus on the study of induced currents and completely omit the possibility of ground potential rise. Current research also neglects possible factors that can affect the protection capability of surge protection devices. Ultimately, a more suitable modelling technique, for PV plants, is needed to perform fast transient analysis, e.g. modelling the impact of a lightning strike on PV plant equipment.