• Mitchell Guthrie - Former Chair, NFPA Committee on Lightning Protection & IEC Technical Committee on Lightning Protection

In recent years there have been increased discussions on the use of IEC 62305 lightning protection standards in the United States and associated comparisons of the IEC standard to the requirements in NFPA 780. Some of these discussions have reflected misconceptions on various fronts. This has prompted the Lightning Safety Alliance to create a white paper to clarify some misconceptions in recent comparisons of NFPA 780 and IEC 62305-3. One aspect of this clarification is to explain the structure of the application of IEC standards and how there can be differences in requirements from country to country.

This paper will give an overview of the white paper and address some common misconceptions such as the difference in the scope of application of the two standards. The paper also provides some background on the development of both standards to get a better understanding of the perceived and actual differences and explain some advantages and disadvantages of each standard