Lightning risk assessment of wind turbines in mountainous areas

Modern wind turbines are extremely vulnerable to lightning strikes, especially in mountainous areas. Therefore, it is necessary to accurately assess the lightning strike risk of wind turbines considering the complex terrain in mountainous areas. A lightning risk assessment model basing on the self-consistent leader inception and propagation model (SLIM) was proposed in this paper, in which the mountain is treated as a standard cone considering the terrain height and ground slope angle. This model is used to calculate the lightning collection area of the wind turbine on different terrain heights, ground slope angles, and the location of the wind turbine. Then, this model is used to evaluate the influence on lightning strike risk with different terrain topography. Finally, according to the evaluation results, some optimized design for lightning protection devices of wind turbines were proposed.