Ground rod for lightning protection

[sceepe]

Just reading a grounding article detailing the flaws with grounding a lighting pole to a ground rod only (no EGC). I agree that the EGC should be run back to the feeding panel, however, the ground rod would sure be nice for lightning protection. My question would it be proper to bond the metal pole to the EGC and to the ground rod. Bonding to EGC will provide a low impedance path to clear a ground fault and bonding the pole to the ground rod will take lightning energy to earth. However something doesn't feel right about attaching the EGC to a remote ground rod. Wouldn't that make the EGC path between the rod at the pole and at the service a grounded electrode conductor (GEC) instead of a EGC?? I may be thinking too much about this one....

 

[don_resqcapt19]

Re: Ground rod for lightning protection

Look at 250.54. The ground rod at the pole would be a supplementary grounding electrode.
Don

 

[eesac]

Re: Ground rod for lightning protection

I believe you would "have" to ground bond the EGC, rod, and the pole to create equipotential. If you did not, a potential can be created with the two or more things you are grounding but not bonding together. In our projects where we provide a ground rod at each pole, we bond the metallic pole, ground rod, and EGC together. If you did not ground EGC to the pole, you would not have a low impedance return path as required by Code, since the ground is not allowed to be return path in this case.