Abstract

Lightning Density in Mid-South Synergy's Service Territory
Track: Electric and Gas
Author(s): Comfort Manyame, Kerry Kelton, Daniel Bethapudi

More than 4000 power outages were reported in Mid-South Synergy Electric Cooperative's service territory between May 2005 and March 2008. Almost half of these outages were caused by lightning strikes, whilst the other half were attributed to trees outside and inside the right of way, equipment failure, and a small percentage were not accounted for. In this paper, we present a GIS based approach for analyzing lightning strike data to identify areas within our service territory which have high density of lightning strikes. We used the National Lightning Detection Network's lightning strike data, and ArcGIS (9.2) Spatial Analyst extension to achieve our objective. Most (90 %) of the 474175 cloud to ground lightning strikes in our service territory had negative polarity. Stroke density ranged from 4-83 stroke/mi2/year. There was a very weak positive correlation between outage events and lightning strike density (R2 = 0.03) and hence we had more outages in areas with high lighting stroke density. Because we have gained a better understanding of the spatial distribution of lightning strikes within our service territory, we are now in a position to make more informed decisions on where to concentrate lightning arrestors.

Comfort Manyame
Mid-South Synergy
7625 HWY 6
Navasota , Texas 77868
United States
Phone: 9368255103
Fax: 9368255166
E-mail: cmanyame@midsouthsynergy.com

Kerry Kelton
Mid-South Synergy
7625 HWY 6
Navasota , Texas 77868
United States
Phone: 9368255100
E-mail: kkelton@midsouthsynergy.com

Daniel Bethapudi
Mid-South Synergy
7625 HWY 6
Navasota , Texas 77868
United States
Phone: 9368255100
E-mail: dbethapudi@midsouthsynergy.com