Vintage Windmill and Wind Generator Forum

Any thoughts on lightning? When I put up my 35' wincharger tower the instructions said to put in a 4' ground rod. So I did. It seemed to me to be kind of silly because the whole tower is 4' in the ground?

Lightning can do strange things, better to be safe than sorry I'd figure.

I don't know. If the turntable is mostly insulated from the head, would that matter? Yes, the tower is already grounded. How many taller trees are around it?

This is above my paygrade.

Seems redundant to me. How was the ground rod connected/electrically bonded to the tower?

I clamped a heavy copper battery cable to both the rod and the tower. This lady i work with said lightning would strike the windmill on her farm all the time. She said the head would be glowing red from the heat.... that would melt up the windings in a windcharger. Another neighbor said he no sooner put his windmill together and lightning blew it to smithereens! Quite the stories but enough to make me a bit worried. We can get some pretty wild lightning up here in Canada. Probably way worse than in the states due to the cold air LOL!

Oh my! That's more than a little concerning. Of all the mills I've worked on, and seen, I have never seen one damaged by lightning.

In the late 1970's and early 1980's I took care of a big data center for a Department store. They built a distribution center about 3 miles from the center and put up a tower for communication. The town is built on an iron ore hill and if there was lighting anywhere around it would strike that tower and come into the building. I spent many a long days searching for all the parts the strike would blow up. I still don't understand how the strike can come into machines and blow up individual parts, sometime the same parts in two different machines. They tried everything to stop it, never succeded, finally took the tower down. Windy maybe windmills act like lighting rods on houses the strike goes into the ground and if there is nothing to burn up you wouldn't know it struck. Maybe more than you wanted to know!

Had lightning hit the big tall cottonwood next to the house when I lived in the country. Split the tree, scared the s**t out of me, it was like 2 in the morning. The tree survived, but the treehouse I built for the kids in it looked like it was dynamited. Splinters all over the yard.

Lightning is hunting ground.

When my bride & I got married nearly 40 years ago, my friend gave us one chicken. Her name was Monique, she was a french chick don't ya know. Monique would lay one egg a day every day until lightning hit a tree across the yard. Blew pieces of bark everywhere, Monique survived but never laid an egg again.

Gregg