Lightning Risk Assessment of a Distribution Line by Excluding a Grounding Wire and Current-Limiting Arcing Horns

We need measures to establish a reasonable lightning protection design for medium-voltage distribution lines, which can reduce the capital investment costs and ensure protection against lightning strikes. We will adopt two measures to reduce the capital investment costs of the lightning protection. Firstly, removing GW from new construction or renovation of distribution lines to reduce accidents caused by the fatigue disconnection of GW. Secondly, excluded the currently installed middle-phase arcing horns for the new distribution lines to reduce the maintenance cost of the lightning arresters within the arcing horn. However, the probability of a multi-phase flashover increased when the middle-phase arcing horn was excluded in all the medium phases in the twisted distribution line. In this study, we investigated the measures to improve the lightning protection performance of medium-voltage distribution lines that omitted middle phase arcing horn using the typical distribution configuration. We confirmed to greatly reduce the risk of lightning strikes by leaving the support bracket with the grounding line when removing the GW.