Overview of the protection lightning standards suite EN/IEC 62305

Lightning is a common natural phenomenon. It consists in a suddenly electrostatic discharge between an electrically charged cloud and the ground or between electrically charged regions of a cloud or two different clouds. Unfortunately, without any lightning protection measures to reduce losses, damages and risks, lightning effects can often lead to human losses/injuries and assets damages. Meeting the above mentioned issues, the EN / IEC 62305 series of standards offer a comprehensive set of guide lines to design and implement lighting protection systems for structures, services and equipment, with respect to the effects of lightning flashes, both direct and indirect. It should be noted that the EN / IEC 62305 documents are exceptionally complex and comprehensive. This article purpose is to assist the users of the standard series for a less time consuming and more effective approach of lightning protection. It gives an overview of the standard suite, by simplifying and summarizing its key points. A case study regarding the structure protection for an Airport Traffic Control Tower comes to illustrate the practical application of the standard. The lightning protection system of class I is proposed for structure protection and analyzed by using the rolling sphere and protection angle methods. Analysis concludes that the designed LPS is very reliable, simple and easy to implement.