Differences Between Currents of Triggered Lightning Striking the Distribution Line and the Ground

In this paper, the initial stage and the return stroke current waveform parameters of rocket-triggered lightning flashes to the ground and to the distribution line have been analyzed. The results show that the average current, the charge transferred and the action integral associated with the Initial Stage with return strokes are greater than the corresponding values without return strokes. For the initial stage, the presence of the distribution line greatly reduces the maximum current, average current, charge transfer, and action integral by a factor of 0.35, 0.42, 0.51, and 0.19, respectively. For the return stroke, the presence of the distribution line has little effect on the other parameters except for a 2.4-fold increase in the 10-90% risetime. The presence of the distribution line affects the initial stage parameters more significantly than the return stroke parameters, probably because the lightning channel equivalent impedance of the initial stage is much smaller than that of the return stroke. The lightning channel equivalent impedance of the initial stage estimated in this paper is about 145 ohms and the estimated lightning channel equivalent impedance for the return stroke is greater than 2000 ohms.