Have you ever seen some of thos spectacular lightning bolt pictures in books? Ever just watched a powerful lighning storm a night. I it is awe inspiring at a distance as a spectator, and terrifying if its too close. If you live in a lighting prone area, its best to study up and know about proper grounding and basic protections you can add to your off grid building projects.
Yesterday afternoon, July 31st will be burned in my memory as I prepare for a large, high pressure technical task. Lightning struck the top of the hill with my Internet service tower. Not just any of the 14 or so locations, but one of the big three. According to a nearby resident lightning struck the top of the hill, and some of their appliances now don’t work.
This is the kind of situation that tests your backup plans to the maximum. As it turns out we all live by faith. Faith that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the lights and Internet will work, and in my case – that lightning WON’T strike my towers! Well 7 plus years, and now its crunch time.
No matter how well I protect these sites with proper grounding, there is simply no way to put a small computer board on a tower and completely protect it from a nearby or direct lightning event! The short electromagnetic pulse from a 100,000 volt strike is so large, that electronic devices just don’t survive well.
How are your backup plans going? Backups for data, for power, for anything important you rely on? Have you tested, or have these backups been tested recently? Tell us about your thoughts in the comment section below!
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Some years ago I was 20 feet from point of impact of a lightning bolt. It struck the metal roof of the shop building and fried every telephone and computer in the place. At the time I was working on the radar on a boat dry hauled out for repairs.
This was a big boat and I was working up top at the same level as the metal roof ridge that got hit.
The difference was I was not grounded the building and office equipment was.
Later the business owner asked me if we could have dome anything to prevent burning out all thoise computers. I linked the various building computers using optical cables. Completely seperated the telephone power system and computer systems with seperate grounding rods. The area has frequent thunder storms but that place did not suffer a recurrence of lightning damage to the computer equipment.
My suggestion would be faraday cages for all electronic equipment, substantial grounding wires for all faraday cages and fiber optic communications lines to and from computer boards and telecommunications line including radio transcievers that has to be outdoor with antenna. Worst case you only lose the radio not everything else.