How To Protect Your Industrial Electronic Equipment From Lightning Damage
It’s that time of year again – thunderstorms and lightning strikes. Lightning caused by storms can produce currents as high as 500 kiloamps and voltage up to 30,000 kilovolts. At this voltage, your industrial electronic equipment is vulnerable to damage or even downright destruction.
Lighting strikes can cause damage through power surges called “transients” which happen when lightning strikes nearby hitting transmitting devices such as metallic plant equipment, pipes, or wiring. Even the magnetic field associated with lighting can cause damage to computers, disks, and tapes that might show up days or weeks later.
Damage to electrical equipment can include flashover of insulation inside motors or transformers, vaporized traces on printed circuit boards, vaporized transistors and integrated circuits, blown fuses, and more. None of it good.
The cost of lightning damage is downtime, reduced production, and equipment repair. There are some things you can do to help minimize lightning damage:
0 Diversion: ground metallic structures
0 Attenuation: careful wiring such as metallic raceways, cable shields, twisted pairs, extensive grounding and earthing
o Suppression: up-to-date suppression devices
All that said, sometimes, your equipment will still suffer damage. If that’s the case, let our tech team evaluate your item to see if it is repairable or “smoked”. There is no cost for the evaluation and we can rush your repair back into production at your request. Or, if it is “smoked” we can dispose of the item for you and, in some cases, obtain a replacement. Check out our website at www.acsindustrial.com or call our ACS customer service team at 800-605-6419. We are standing by to help you through the thunderstorm season!
