Influence of rainfall on lightning flashovers from trees to medium voltage bare and covered conductors

In this paper, a laboratory experiment was conducted to compare the performance of lightning discharge characteristics of bare conductor (BC) and covered conductor (CC), resulting from very-close lightning strokes to trees. Special attention is paid to the influence of rainfall on the lightning arc characteristics. All the experiments are performed using full-scale configurations. Other factor investigated is the effects of tree-to-line clearance. The studies reveal a substantial amount of new information which is required to fully understand the true behavior of very-close lightning interaction with power conductors in rainfall, which is often the true lightning situation.