Field measurement of the grounding impedance of a wind farm in Venezuela

One of the main parameters involved in lightning studies in wind mill parks, is the grounding system. For this reason, it is necessary to know not only the grounding resistance at low frequency (measured with traditional equipments), but also the transient behavior especially in the frequency domain. In Venezuela, recently was installed a wind mills park with 100 MW of capacity, in a region with high lightning activity. In this context, a variety of measurements of the grounding systems were carried out during this year, including: soil resistivity, traditional resistance measurement and impedance measurement using a portable lightning generator at 3 kV. The main results are showed and analyzed in the context of knowing more detailed the behavior of grounding systems in this special kind of applications.