In this paper, the lightning protection requirements of a typical residential building have been discussed and techniques have been provided to protect the building from both direct and indirect damages of lightning, with special attention to the protection of PV panels placed on the roof. These techniques include the designing challenges and also the type of devices which can be used to reduce the surge current flow and magnetic field. It has been shown that for buildings with roof top PV systems only the avoidance of lightning attachment to unprotected parts of the building is not sufficient. Lightning currents passing through the lightning protection system may still affect the PV power system through inductive coupling. Hence strategic placement of PV systems and shielding of conducting systems wherever possible has been recommended. It has also been envisaged that the impact of lightning on PV systems is directly related to the isokeraunic level of the region and elevation of the building. Several recommendations have been proposed in designing the air termination system for a roof with PV panels in high isokeraunic regions. Finally the building integrated photo voltaic (BIPV) projects which are conducted in Malaysia have been evaluated..

Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) devices are the key to produce electrical energy economically and environmental friendly in a deregulated market. Implemented through a new equipment consisting high power electronics based technologies, it opens up new opportunities for controlling line power flows, minimizing losses and maintaining bus voltages at desired level in a power system network. In large, interconnected power systems, power system damping is often reduced, leading to lightly damped electromechanical modes of oscillations. Proper controller design and installation of this system becomes essential for control and operation improvement of power systems networks. Three categories of FACTS controllers may be distinguished: Series controllers; Shunt controllers; Combined series-shunt controllers. The location of these devices depends on the amount of local load and through load and from transient stability point of view their location moves towards the sending-end. The optimal location for the device is not in the mid-point of the line but rather, slightly off-center of the transmission line gives better performance for maximum benefit and depends on the line resistance and is linearly increased as R/X ratio of the line is increased. The paper attempted to highlight best location and control strategy for this device that, guarantee security and stability of the power system networks for maximum benefits.

In this paper we consider wind energy generators as tall structures, thus the reflections of the current of a direct lightning strike, at various interfaces, have been included in the computational model. A significant effect of such reflections on the voltage distribution has been observed thus, inclusion of the reflections in the computation model has been justified. The study focuses on over voltage at critical locations that have been reported in the literature as having high probability of lightning damage. All parts related to the power generation in a wind turbine, including the step up transformer are modeled by lumped parameters using the Matlab/Simulink software. The transient response is obtained by applying the lightning impulse current to the equivalent circuit under several values of grounding resistance and several cable sheath grounding methods with different lightning strike waveforms. The results show that the location of the cable shield grounding and the grounding resistance values have significant influence on the produced over voltage waveforms at the input and output of transformer terminals. Appropriate surge protection devices for avoiding dangerous over voltage are proposed to reduce harmful effects.

In the event of a direct lightning strike to a protected building which is integrated with an electrical or electronic system installed on the roof such as roof-top PV system, dangerous arcing may occur between the external lightning protection system (LPS) and the conductive components of the electrical system. To prevent such side flashes, a minimum separation distance between the metallic components and the air termination system is required. Even though, IEC62305-3 Standard provides a formula to specify the necessary separation distance, so far there is no extensive study that has been done to evaluate the suitability of the application of equation to calculate the separation distance, specifically to the safety of electrical systems integrated into the roof top of building. In this study, a new computational method has been developed for calculation of the separation distance between an LPS and metallic components on the roof. In the proposed method which is based on the theoretical background of the IEC62305-3 Standard formula, the break down behavior of the gap geometry between the LPS and the metallic components for the applied voltage across the gap is analyzed. PSCAD software was used to model the LPS and the lightning strokes.