Hitachi Industries buys into LEC

Hitachi Industries has bought a minority stake in Lightning Eliminators and Consultants (LEC), a Boulder, Colorado-based firm specializing in preventative and protective lightning technology.

Tokyo-based Hitachi Industries, a member of the Hitachi Group and leading provider of industrial systems planning, design, construction and maintenance services, has bought a minority stake in Lightning Eliminators and Consultants (LEC), a Boulder, Colorado-based firm specializing in preventative and protective lightning technology.

The agreement expands worldwide support of LEC's preventive and protective lightning technology, including its patented Dissipation Array System (DAS) - adding Hitachi Industries' resources to joint sales, marketing, engineering, and research and development efforts, while giving Hitachi Industries exclusive rights to sell or sublicense the technology in Japan.

"Investment in LEC follows ten years of partnering with them on more than 140 installations in Japan," explains Dr Akihiro Wakabayashi, Doctor of Engineering, General Manager of Hitachi Industries' Defense Thunder Center.

"In that time, DAS and related technologies have proven themselves in research and installations with a lightning strike prevention record of 100%".

"The need for strike prevention grows as IT equipment becomes more sensitive and weather patterns become irregular," adds Wakabayashi.

"Hitachi Industries will do its part to develop and promote DAS as a global standard for lightning prevention and protection".

Despite Japan's severe lightning environment, Hitachi Industries has achieved a 100% strike prevention rate in DAS-protected facilities in a range of applications.

These applications have included banks, hospitals, universities, and observatories; communication towers and radio relay stations; dams, filtration plants, transformer substations, and train control centers; as well as golf country clubs, brewing and distillation facilities.

DAS, a proprietary application of Charge Transfer Technology, originated as a lightning prevention system that a former chief engineer for NASA's Apollo moon landing mission and space shuttle design team developed to protect high-risk facilities.

In the US and abroad, DAS has proven to be the preventative solution for lightning protection - topping 30,000 system years with 99.7% reliability, and cutting storm-induced voltages by up to 7,000% in protected zones, thus reducing the lightning strike risk.

DAS prevents strikes by continually lowering the electrostatic field intensity within a site under storm-induced charged clouds to well below the level required for lightning termination, even in worst-case storms.

At the Myoken Weir Control Office in Nagaoka City, Japan, which had suffered severe lightning damage several times in the past, for instance, Hitachi Industries demonstrated the efficacy of DAS in lowering the ambient electric charge within the site, which had otherwise attracted lightning strikes.

In one storm, Hitachi Industries showed that DAS lowered electrostatic strength to near 0.0 kV/m in a 48-meter radius zone around the building, while electrostatic strength ranged from +32 kV/m to -35kV/m outside the zone.

In another storm, Hitachi Industries showed DAS lowered electrostatic strength to near 0.0 kV/m in the protected zone while electrostatic strength ranged from +52 kV/m to -38 kV/m outside the zone.

"DAS rapidly generates or bleeds off ions from a site as needed to adapt to changes in storm cloud electrostatic strength and polarity," explains Wakabayashi.

"This neutralizes the electrostatic charge at the site, making it unattractive to lightning, which effectively and reliably prevents damaging strikes".

Lightning maps of DAS-protected sites in Japan provide evidence of its effectiveness in preventing strikes.

During one storm, the Sapporo Brewery Company plant in Hita City, Japan had more than 150 recorded incidents of lightning activity within a 5.0 km radius of the DAS-protected site in an hour.

Since the installation of the DAS systems, no incidents of lightning activity have occurred in a 1.0 km radius around the site and just two lightning incidents in a 2.0 km radius.

Similarly, despite more than 170 incidents of lightning activity occurring within an hour in a 3.0 km radius around the 167 meter high Sapporo Ebisu tower in Tokyo, since it was protected by DAS no lightning has struck it and just four lightning incidents were recorded in a 0.5 km radius surrounding the tower.

In the three decades since LEC introduced DAS into the U.S.

marketplace, it has been the only lightning protection system proven to prevent lightning strikes to any protected facility.

Thousands of Dissipation Array Systems have been installed to date in worldwide applications ranging from communications towers to petrochemical storage tank farms, electrical power lines to public buildings.

DAS has been used to protect facilities as large as three square kilometers and structures as high as 1,700 ft.

DAS is currently providing complete lightning protection to an extensive list of customers and facility types, including many Fortune 500 firms such as Federal Express, Turner Broadcasting/CNN, PPG Chemical, Union Camp, ExxonMobil, and ChevronTexaco.

Lightning Eliminators and Consultants specializes in designing, manufacturing and installing integrated, engineered systems to prevent and eliminate all lightning related problems.

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