Lightning

Status
Not open for further replies.
G

G._S._Ohm

Senior Member
Location
DC area
Lightning kills 60/yr in the US.


Lightning deterrent systems by the same maker are installed and two people die anyway within X days/months/years of each other.
Is there probable cause to say that these systems are not working within their published specs?


For those interested I suggest this question should be brought up on a probability forum because
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_value_theory
is pretty difficult.


Same goes for the Sandy storm.
 
My opinion on lightning is that you can try and protect yourself from it, but chances are you will not succeed 100% of the time.

A lot of people think lightning protection systems are as much lightning attractors as anything else. I am not convinced they are wrong. They seem to do a pretty fair job of protecting structures though. But, people are a lot more fragile than most buildings.
 
petersonra said:
They seem to do a pretty fair job of protecting structures though. But, people are a lot more fragile than most buildings.
Click to expand...
I never thought of it that way, with the rolling sphere method for protecting buildings and all.

But 60/yr in the US is down in the noise. ~6000/yr die from food poisoning and there is no lasting public uproar.
I can't imagine scarce resources being allocated for this problem. It's like shark attacks.

Maybe the French company's legal defense is that their system is only there to protect buildings.
People can die from a nearby lightning strike because of the enormous magnetic/electric fields generated but I've never heard of the building structure being damaged by this.
 
Lightning deterrents are not the same as lightning protection. With "deterrents" the notion is that you can prevent lightning from happening. With "protection" you assume that it will happen and take appropriate steps.

I'll take protection over deterrence any day.
 
roger said:
ESE type systems have been a hot topic for years and there has been a lot of court time over them as well, here are a few older articles (there are many out there) pertaining to this subject.

http://www.ecle.biz/pdf/LitigationNewsletter02.08.pdf

http://akihito-shigeno.com/files/Scientists_Oppose_Early_Streamer_Air_Terminals.pdf


http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_lhm/charge_transfer_opp.html

Roger
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, it appears to be one group of people with an economic interest in the old standards opposing another group with economic interests in a new standard. Now a judge who is clueless about it (as are all of us) has to make a decision as to which group of people who have competing strong economic interests he should believe.

I think the answer has to be that without strong field evidence that the newfangled thing works at least as well as the old stuff, that the court made the right decision.

I found it odd that they were enjoined from claiming some kind of UL approval. Since there was never a US standard for this type of lightning protection system it seems unlikely that UL would ever have "approved" such a thing at all, so claiming UL somehow gave their blessing to it seems bad in itself. Although maybe UL gave them some kind of preliminary approval contingent on NFPA approval of the std that never got approved.

I don't know enough about this kind of stuff to know with any certainty just what gives here. It sure seems like so much gibberish to me. I can understand though why it would be attractive as it appears to be cost effective if it actually works.
 
From
http://www.ecle.biz/pdf/LitigationNewsletter02.08.pdf

This fact

"1000s of these unproven systems may have been
installed "

over years provides a gold mine of empirical data to prove statistically to some level of certainty that this works, or not. Despite, or because of, the intentions of the makers, it may actually work. Florida and the Ozarks are lightning hotspots so I'd first look at data from those places.

Proving cost-effectiveness requires valuing human life. This number varies from $200K to $4M.
 
Last edited:
G._S._Ohm said:
From
http://www.ecle.biz/pdf/LitigationNewsletter02.08.pdf

This fact

"1000s of these unproven systems may have been
installed "

over years provides a gold mine of empirical data to prove statistically to some level of certainty that this works, or not. Despite, or because of, the intentions of the makers, it may actually work. Florida and the Ozarks are lightning hotspots so I'd first look at data from those places.

Proving cost-effectiveness requires valuing human life. This number varies from $200K to $4M.
Click to expand...



Wow. And I thought all caps was considered shouting. I see now that oversizing a post is just as in your face as all caps...
 
Hv&Lv said:
Wow. And I thought all caps was considered shouting. I see now that oversizing a post is just as in your face as all caps...
Click to expand...
Yeah, my eyes are hurting.:blink:

Roger
 
It doesn't look that big to me but maybe I have undiagnosed eye problems.

Sorry.

Getting a uniform font size and type using embedded cut text from elsewhere is not so easy for me.
 
G._S._Ohm said:
It doesn't look that big to me but maybe I have undiagnosed eye problems.

Sorry.

Getting a uniform font size and type using embedded cut text from elsewhere is not so easy for me.
Click to expand...

Depending on your settings the font can appear very different on your screen than ours.

Here is a screen shot from my PC.

Font.JPG
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top