People buy a lightning arrester and assume the building is protected. The arrester is one part. A working system has an air termination that intercepts the strike, a down conductor that carries it to ground, an earth termination that dissipates it, and bonding that stops the surge finding a path through the building's metalwork or electronics. Weakness in any one of the four defeats the other three, and in practice the down conductor and the earthing are where most installations fail.
A conventional Franklin rod protects a cone-shaped zone around itself, so a large roof needs a mesh of terminals and interconnecting conductors. An Early Streamer Emission arrester launches an upward leader earlier, which gives it a much larger protection radius from a single point. For a factory shed, warehouse, solar plant or open yard, one ESE mast is normally simpler and cheaper than a full mesh. For a small house or an individual chimney, a spike is the sensible choice.
IS/IEC 62305 sets out a risk assessment — structure size and height, local lightning density, what the building contains and what a strike would cost. From that you get a protection level, and the protection level sets the rolling sphere radius or protection angle that determines terminal placement and height. A supplier who quotes an arrester without asking building dimensions is guessing.
The down conductor has to carry tens of thousands of amps in microseconds. Sharp bends create inductance and the surge can flash across to nearby metalwork instead of following the conductor. Keep bends gentle, keep the route as direct as possible, and use at least two down conductors on anything but the smallest structure. Cross section matters — 50 square millimetres and above is typical.
A lightning protection earth is usually specified below 10 ohms and is separate from the electrical earth, then bonded to it at a test link. Without a low resistance path the surge will find another one, which is how strikes end up in equipment. This is why lightning protection and earthing are quoted together — separating them across two suppliers is where specification gaps appear.
Systems need periodic inspection: continuity of the down conductor, condition of the joints, earth resistance, and physical condition of the terminal. A strike counter fitted to the down conductor tells the maintenance team whether the system has actually taken hits and when to inspect, rather than relying on a calendar.
MB Enterprises ESE arresters are rated at a 110 metre protection radius. The area actually covered depends on mast height and the protection level chosen in the risk assessment, so the radius alone is not the whole answer.
Almost always. Solar arrays are large, exposed and full of electronics. They need array bonding, structure earthing and usually a separate air termination, plus surge protection on the DC and AC sides.
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