An Experimental Study of Lightning Overvoltages on a Small-scale Wind Turbine Model

Abstract This paper is aimed at determining the transient induced overvoltages along a wind turbine (WT) exposed to a lightning strike. During lightning strike, the WT carries excessive currents resulting in a high voltage rise of the WT, which can cause severe damage to the electronic equipment inside the WT nacelle. The lightning strike has been simulated in the high voltage (HV) laboratory by injecting an impulse voltage into a small-scale WT. The temporal voltage variation was measured at different positions along the test WT. In addition, the impact of varying the WT grounding resistance on voltage values was investigated confirming a voltage increase with the increase of grounding resistance value. These results are important in the design of WT protection system against lightning storms.