Dan Young, President, Rabun Labs, Inc., Mason, Texas

Solving An Old Grounding Problem

There's an age-old problem in electrical grounding. During the more than 15 years that I have been actively involved in equipment protection, over and over again, I have heard clients air their many concerns, frustrations and problems regarding electrical grounds, lightning and power quality issues resulting in malfunctioning or damaged equipment. In many of these cases, the root cause of erratic or improper equipment operation, as well as the inability of some equipment protection devices to properly function, turned out to be the electrical ground that the equipment is connected to. Widely used surge suppressors, lightning rods and air terminals (for facility, satellite dish sites, broadcast and communications tower protection and the like) are typically completely ground-dependent to perform their protective functions. In other words, a low-resistance electrical ground connection should always be available and working at the time of a surge or lightning strike. In addition, a reliable and consistent low-resistance ground connection is also important to reduce electrical noise in the protected equipment, and is especially desirable to enable radio-frequency transmitting and receiving equipment to operate efficiently. A great deal of time and effort is usually spent ensuring that the electrical ground at a facility is properly installed and that the resistance reading is within acceptable limits for the area.