Modeling of Currents and Voltages in the Lightning Protection System of a Residential Building and an Attached Overhead Power Line

Following a series of rocket-and-wire triggered lightning tests with different lightning protection systems carried out at the Camp Blanding, Florida, the experimental studies of impulse current distribution in a lightning protection system of a residential building were conducted in Huta Poreby, located in the southeastern part of Poland, where the soil resistivity is about 40× lower. The obtained and previously published results focused mainly on comparing the effectiveness of different grounding systems of the test house. In this article, the entire system installed in Huta Poreby is modeled and current distribution is analyzed, including the MV/LV transformer and the 500 m long unenergized distribution power line matched at its end. The application of the current generator model instead of a typical impulse source with an arbitrarily defined input current enabled investigating the influence of soil parameters on the obtained current waveforms. With the increase of soil resistivity, the current waveforms become more and more similar to those measured at Camp Blanding, Florida, where soil resistivity reaches 4000 Ωm.