Transmission of electricity relies on knowledge about lightning sites to assist in their testing and operations.
Lightning with high current discharges are a hazard to the reliable electric power relay systems as they damage the power lines, if the position of these lightning strokes are revealed in advance, electricity can be redirected and thus save both time and money.
All through the winter season, the Sea of Japan’s coastal line is subjected to disparate or peculiar lightning incidents that are tough to spot. Vaisala, a Finnish company along with Japan’s Tohuku Electric power company and Sankosha corporation have jointly worked together to solve this issue and formulate a superior software for lightning sensors called Vaisala Thunderstorm CG Enhanced lightning sensor LS7001. Its capacity to trace lightning discharges is twice more than the conventional models and it has an ability to relentlessly locate electromagnetic waves of lightning. Its superior self-testing and calibration qualities allow the creation of pseudo complex waves leading to enhanced stroke time dimensions.
During the 2009/2010 winter at Tohuku a network of 6 LS7001 sensors were installed and the statistics were obtained by using a Lightning Electromagnetic Pulse recorder (LEMP). The project is expected to last through the winter lightning spell of 2010 and 2011, wherein the algorithm updates will be deployed in the software and downloaded into the LS sensors to make it more efficient and available for energy and power industries around the world.