The institution of Engineers, Malaysia (IEM) with the assistance from Mun Hean Malaysia organised a seminar on “Early Streamer Emission (ESE) System Compliance with IEC62305: Protection against Lightning” at the Wisma IEM in Petaling Jaya Selangor on 27th March 2015. This half-day seminar was attended by more than 40 participants comprising of consultants, engineers, contractors as well as local authorities. The seminar was chaired by Ir. Mah Soo from IEM.

Mr Bruno Roland, Business Technical Manager of HELITA ABB, France, was invited as the key speaker for this seminar to provide the participants with an insight into the Pulsar ESE system as well as its compliance to the IEC standard. Mr Bruno has more than 22 years of professional engineering experience in surge and lightning protection and engineering advancement of protection against lightning such as representing ABB in France, European and International Standards writing committees on lightning protection.

The seminar covered the concept of upward streamer and downward streamer of a lightning strike, ESE theories, the time-gain, as well as physical ESE design with the HELITA Pulsar ESE design in particular with illustrations and videos. He then provided the participants with images and videos of the HELITA Testing lab, lab testing procedures and the severities involved in testing the Pulsar ESE.

In the second part of the seminar, Mr Bruno explained in greater detail on the scope of NFC17-102 standard and its harmonisation with the IEC standard. Mr Bruno further explained the 2011 revision of the standards and its improvements to provide for greater standards harmonisation.

In the final part of the seminar, Mr Bruno Roland explained the NFC17-102 standards requirement and the compliance of the ESE system to this standard, also on the stringent test and functional requirements of an ESE lightning arrestor. Mr Bruno stressed that in selecting of an ESE product, the product certification is very important and also to ensure the product selected is tested to and complies with NFC17-102. The testing and certification should also be from an recognised accredited certification body to ensure the product performs to the required NFC standards. HELITA Pulsar ESE systems are tested and certified by APAVE in France.

A question and answer session was conducted at the end of Mr Bruno’s presentation where the participants fielded any questions they had on ESE to Mr Bruno. Following the Q&A session, Ir Mah Soo gathered feedback from the participants on whether they are inclined to use ESE in their designs or implementation where a majority of the participants indicated their inclination to use the ESE system.