Lightning sensors, built in-house
Lightning protection at palm oil mills often fails quietly. The grounding dries out, or the cable gets stolen. So I designed a device that watches it every second.
7mills
in operation, six more planned for 2027
The problem
Lightning protection has plenty of failure modes. Sometimes the grounding is poor because the soil is too dry. Sometimes the cable gets stolen.
Neither shows from the outside. You find out when lightning strikes and the equipment is already damaged.
What we did
- 01 · Field
Build the device in-house
I designed the sensor panel myself, hardware and firmware. The first version only counted strikes. The current one also measures strike current and logs grounding resistance every second.
- 03 · Telemetry
Ride the link that is already there
Data goes out over VSAT and cellular, on the same MIMS link that already connects the mills to head office.
- 04 · Screen
Show it in MIMS
Strike count, strike current and grounding resistance appear on the same screen as the mill data. Grounding getting worse or a cable gone missing? It shows.
The result
- Running at 7 mills. Six more planned for 2027.
- Lightning damage has dropped sharply compared with before.
- Is anything still getting damaged? Yes. The cause is stolen grounding. The difference is that now we see it and can deal with it.