Ground wires provided over the High voltage power lines can protect the lines effectively from lightning surges and reduce outages or breakdowns. The method in vogue is to provide a certain protection angle without any consideration of the height of the tower. This method worked well till the introduction of E.H.V. lines whose supporting towers are unusually high. The method suggested here involves consideration of tower height also. To ensure proper ground wire shielding from direct strokes to power lines, the arrangement of the ground wire and power conductor has to be adjusted in such a way that the extreme power conductor lies onortotheleft of the curve n=2 or even 2.5. If the power conductor lies to the right of the curve n=2 or 25, it is suggested that shielding failures will increase resulting in large number of lightning outages or breakdowns.
