Discussion on Lightning performance criteria for electric power systems

Dr. Anderson´s paper embraces a most novel and interesting aspect of research on lightning and power systems, amounting in some respects to a ´poll´ of supply utilities on acceptable levels of outage rates from lightning, for which much data gathering and analysis was required. Initially, he deals with the method of calculating ´collection area´ per unit length of an overhead line using generally the most up-to-date information available: one rather minor item here is that an even more recent CIGRE estimate for strike distance R is 14H⁰⁶, compare that given in his eqn. 2a. However, this in fact introduces rather negligibly different values for this parameter, though the author rightly emphasises (Section 5) the need for further improvement in accuracy here and elsewhere.