Incorporating a High-speed Camera in the Lightning Current Measurement System for Wind Turbines

A lightning current measurement system for wind turbines was developed and tested in the High Voltage Laboratory at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, University of Zagreb, to determine actual distributions of lightning current parameters in a particular wind turbine area. The output of the measurement system is a waveform of lightning current. The measurement system consists of two current sensors with different frequency and amplitude ranges and a real-time controller with two digitizers and a GPS module. The current sensors are Rogowski coils connected to integrators with coaxial cables. The prototype was installed on a wind turbine in a high winter lightning activity area. The current stage of development involves integrating the high-speed camera into the prototype measurement system to obtain the visual confirmation of the waveform measurements and help categorize lightning strikes into downward or upward strikes. The camera control application was developed in LabVIEW. The camera was set to trigger by the real-time controller. Also, a redundant trigger occurs when there is a change in motion in the camera frame in case the prototype measurement system fails to register a lightning strike and therefore fails to send a trigger signal to the camera. The camera control application was tested in the High Voltage Laboratory by recording a flashover in a spark gap and a flashover on the insulator.