The key task of lightning and surge protection is to protect people as well as private and public buildings, industrial plants and all the equipment inside them. In this way, costly lightning and surge damage can be avoided.
Reliable lightning protection protects people from injury or even death caused by lightning strikes in their own homes or public buildings (e.g. football centres or hospitals).
A direct lightning strike can cause fires in buildings. Lightning protection is therefore becoming increasingly important, especially in the process industry and ATEX zones (potentially explosive atmospheres).
All electrical and electronic devices can be damaged by surges. This can result in financial loss and the loss of personal data and information.
The downtime of a production plant has economic consequences. By protecting against lightning strikes and surges, costly repairs and downtime can be avoided.
The lack of availability of data and information can have considerable consequences in the transport sector, for example. A good example is the control tower and servers at an airport.
Every year, the GDV publishes a current lightning diagram, which states the number of claims and their insurance benefits. In 2024, the total damage amounted to €350 million for 220,000 cases of lightning and surge damage. The high average damage can be explained by the ever-improving technical equipment in buildings and houses.
*Source: Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft e.V.; provisional status June 2025
Overvoltages are extremely high voltages that lie outside the tolerance range of the rated voltage. They have very steep rise times and can disrupt or even destroy the insulation and function of electrical and electronic components.
A general distinction is made between two types of surges:
In the case of lightning strikes, a distinction is also made between direct lightning strikes into the structure (S1), lightning strikes next to the structure (S2), lightning strikes into the supply lines (S3) or lightning strikes next to the supply lines (S4).
Direct or nearby lightning strikes within a radius of approx. 2 km can cause overvoltages that enter the building via the power, telephone, data and I&C* lines. Within this circuit, the disturbance variables can be coupled into the system galvanically, inductively or capacitively.
However, surges caused by switching inductive loads, switching operations by energy suppliers or outdated and defective electrical appliances occur far more frequently than lightning strikes.
*instrumentation and control
The idea of the surge protection concept is to gradually limit overvoltages to safe levels. In DIN VDE 0110-1, surge protection for energy supply and distribution is divided into three areas:
The terminal device has an insulation resistance of 1.5 kV. Lightning and surge arresters are used to prevent them from being destroyed by interference pulses and overvoltages.
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