Grounding & Lightning Protection

TESSCO is Your Total Source® for Grounding Solutions. That's why TESSCO offers a full line of grounding and surge protector products from leading manufacturers. Protect your investment with our full range of lightning arrestors and testing products.

Product Categories

Grounding Systems

Exothermic Ground Connections

Coax, Network & AC Protectors

Product Brands

Andrew Corporation

Burndy

PolyPhaser (Transtector)

Application Drawings

Grounding & Lightning
Protection

Rooftop & Existing Structures

Towers & Monopoles

View featured Grounding & Lightning Protection products.

Grounding Overview

With copper and steel making up most of the material used on a standard wireless site, your investment of up to one million dollars in equipment is susceptible to damage caused by a lightning strike. While no grounding system can fully protect a site from a direct strike, a properly grounded site can limit damage to a minimum. From ground kits for cable to exothermic connections to your site's ground ring, TESSCO can provide a solution that will help protect your site.

Grounding a Site

Electricity is looking for the simplest path to the Earth. At a non-grounded site, the simplest path for electricity starts with the copper coaxial cable and leads right through the site’s equipment to the grounded power source, destroying virtually everything in its path. A properly grounded site creates a simpler, straighter path for the electricity to follow to the Earth’s surface that bypasses the site’s equipment.

Surge Suppression

The most important part of grounding any site is placing a surge suppressor or lightning protector on the coax right after the coax enters the shelter. As the grounding kit takes surge energy off the coax’s outer conductor, the surge arrestor takes energy off the center conductor. Surge suppressors are installed between the connections of two cables (i.e. between a jumper and a coax run) and come in a variety of types to fit RF connectors. Surge suppressors are rated for specific frequency ranges and will block and then dissipate an RF signal outside of those ranges. However, not all energy can be blocked because the pulse reaches the suppressor at different times and gets through before the differential voltage can be equalized. The energy that gets through the suppressor is called the Throughput Energy. The goal is to pick the model with the lowest throughput for your desired frequency range and power level.

Lightning protectors can be either flange or bulkhead mounted. While flange can be mounted to a ground bar or single-point ground panel in certain applications, bulkhead mounting is the recommended mounting method.

Coax Grounding Kit

There are three standard connections within a grounding system. The first is the connection between the ground kit and the coaxial cable. It is very important to create a continuous bond between the outer copper conductor of the coax and the sleeve of the ground kit, so the proper-sized kit is essential. Once the ground kit has been wrapped around the coax, the kit’s copper lead is then cut to length to create the straightest line to the ground bar. Bends in the ground kits may allow the charge of the lightning strike to jump off and continue down the coax. Place your ground kits on every piece of coax both near the antenna connection and before the coax enters the equipment shelter.

Soil Testing

Designing a grounding system for a wireless site starts with testing the soil using a Ground Resistance Tester to find the point of lowest resistivity based on the electrolytes in the soil. Resistivity is the key factor that determines the resistance of a grounding electrode and the depth to which the electrode must be driven for low ground resistance. Dry soil with few soluble salts has a very-high resistivity, which makes it more difficult for electricity to disperse into the soil. To improve your grounding success, you may need chemical ground rods and ground enhancement material, which add electrolytes to the soil.

Connections

Strong, reliable connections are a must in any grounding system to ensure that a lightning strike travels to the Earth and not to the site’s equipment.

Crimping Ground Lugs

Ground lugs connect ground wires to a centralized location, usually a ground bar. Many types of lugs can be used depending on your grounding system’s requirements or your preferences. They are sized on the same scale as ground wire, and the correct size must be used for a proper and reliable connection. A lug crimper (mechanical or electrical) must be used with a correctly sized die to ensure that a proper connection between the wire and the lug is created.

Attaching Lugs to Ground Bars

Because copper is highly corrosive, ground bars are coated with a lacquer. Before attaching a ground lug to a ground bar, the lacquer must be removed using sand paper. A joint compound should then be applied to improve the connection and help prevent corrosion of the ground bar.

Exothermic Connections

When making a copper-to-copper or copper-to-steel connection, an exothermic ground connection is the best solution. Since many connections are found in wet ground or corrosive environments, molecular welds from exothermic processes are far superior and longer lasting than mechanical or compression connections.

Molds

There are many product options, including re-usable graphite mold or a single-use, all inclusive ceramic mold called "One Shots." Each mold is designed for specific wire, ground rod, and steel pipe sizes, and come in a variety of configurations depending on the application need. Once the pieces to be welded are correctly inserted into the mold, weld metal is poured into the mold and ignited, and the high-temperature reaction occurs safely within the mold and creates a permanent solid molecular bond between the metals. With proper care and cleaning, graphite molds can be used for up to 50 exothermic connections.