Have you ever wondered how skyscrapers manage to get away with being hit by lightning without it causing an issue? Maybe you already know the answer, or maybe it's something you think you should know but for some reason have never really checked it out. If you're the latter, you're in luck because today we're looking at how we protect our data centres from lightning.

In order to protect the data centre and rooftop plant we position copper rods like the ones in these photos every 5 metres around the perimeter of the facility. We have fifty of these rods around the building which are made from copper because of its high conductivity. Each rod is attached to lightning protection like you can see in this second photo.

This lightning protection then connects to to building steel which runs up through the joins in the concrete walls. The building steel attaches at the bottom to ground posts around the base of the data centre. The goal of the lightning protection is to provide a low-resistance path to the ground so that the infrastructure itself isn't struck.