How to protect the fully automatic weather station from lightning?

How to protect the fully automatic weather station from lightning?

Lightning protection facilities, such as lightning rods and nets, are installed to prevent lightning from striking the equipment directly. Although these facilities reduce the risk, the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generated by lightning may still affect the equipment. To cope with this problem, weather stations also take other measures, such as using lightning protection equipment, to protect weather instruments from lightning EMP and ensure data accuracy.

Lightning energy is so great that it may affect circuit equipment within two kilometres. Therefore, when installing a multi-factor automatic weather station, it is necessary to ensure that cables, metal pipes and data lines within the protected area are fitted with lightning arrestors and equipotential connections are made. At the same time, all cables should be buried and laid through metal pipes to enhance lightning protection. This can effectively protect the weather station equipment and ensure accurate data collection.

Lightning protection and grounding is very important to protect the weather station equipment. The grounding design should be in line with the standard, using a single point of grounding and common ground network, to ensure that the grounding resistance is below 4Ω. The working and protective grounding should be connected to the ground network and more than 5 metres away from the lead wire to ensure the effectiveness of the entire grounding system. This can reduce the impact of lightning on the weather station equipment and ensure the normal operation of the equipment and data accuracy.

The lightning safety protection of automatic weather station observation field is a complex project. It should be considered comprehensively and suitable protective measures should be formulated according to the actual situation in order to effectively protect against lightning. Otherwise, any small negligence may lead to lightning accidents.