Lightning struck wind turbines in the U.S. over 77,000 times in 2023 alone. Vaisala Xweather Insight experts detail how their advanced National Lightning Detection Network tracks each bold strike in real-time. Learn how wind farm operators tap into this data to optimize turbine safety and uptime during fierce storms.



Visit their website: https://www.xweather.com/ and read the report!



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Allen Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Vaisala just published his 2023 lightning report, and if you haven't seen it yet, better get online and check it out. One of the key items in that report is 77, 000 lightning strikes occurred to wind turbines in the U. S. in 2023.



So we thought it'd be a pretty good topic for a podcast because we've, Joel and I have seen a lot of lightning damage across the United States and 77, 000 lightning strikes is probably one of the reasons why. And if you're not familiar with Vaisala, Vaisala is XWeather System, which is where that data comes from is in advance, whether intelligence platform provides businesses and organizations with accurate real time.



Weather insights and a lot of sites that we go to, Joel and I go visit, have the XWeather system. And that system integrates data from multiple sources into a sort of a unified view and analyzes current and historical trends and generates hyper local forecasts using artificial intelligence. And as part of that XWeather system is the National Lightning Detection Network, NLDN.



And we're going to use that acronym throughout this podcast. The NLDN is a network of over a hundred ground based sensors across the U. S. that detects cloud to ground and cloud to cloud lightning strikes in real time. That system is operated by VISLA, and it uses sensors to pinpoint lightning strike locations, polarity, amplitude, and other key characteristics like specific energy.



And that network provides critical lightning data for early warning systems, research, and weather sensitive operations like wind turbines. With a detection efficiency over 90 percent nationally, the NLDN sets the standard for accurate real time lightning detection and mapping. Our guest today, we have two of them, Martin Murphy, Senior Scientist at Vaisala.



And Martin has a degree in meteorology from Penn State and a PhD in atmospheric science from the University of Arizona. And he has worked with Vaisala and its predecessors for over 27 years. One of his focuses is on analysis and validation of lightning detection systems, and he's a co author of two patents related to lightning detection.



Martin, welcome to the program.



Martin Murphy: Thanks



Allen Hall: And Hans. Hans is the Vaisala product manager for Xweather, and we've had Hans on the podcast before, and we see Hans at all the trade shows across the United States. So Hans, welcome back to the show.



Hans Loewenheath: Thank you. Thank you for having me.



Allen Hall: So guys, I want to dive in first into the NLDN.



And since Martin's here, I want to understand Or explain to everybody what the system is, because we travel around the United States quite extensively, and we meet with a lot of operators, and when we say, did you check the NLDN, the National Lightning Detection Network, they kind of go, what? What is this thing?



Joel Saxum: You get these glass,