Lightning protection for offshore wind turbines

Wind turbines are rapidly becoming important generators of electric energy, and the size and rated power of new wind turbines continue to increase. As a consequence it is important that wind turbines are treated as other power system components and meets the standards for reliability, protection and safety used in the electric industry in order to reach an acceptable level of operational reliability. In this paper are presented the observations made in a project concerning lightning protection for offshore wind turbines. The objectives were to describe appropriate lightning protection methodologies that ensure a sufficiently high level of lightning protection for wind turbines placed offshore in Denmark, and based on this to open a dialog regarding lightning protection with the major wind turbine manufactures