In terms of total lightning strikes per year, we're right behind central Florida. We're also in a geological zone where it's extremely difficult to ground our equipment adequately due to sandy soil, which makes the earth less conductive than usual. We think that was a big factor in the number of hits we were getting. The lightning rods we had installed were not protecting our equipment. We experienced both direct hits and collateral lightning damage.
Most electrical insulators are silicon composites, and sand is just the same thing.
Our insurance carrier was constantly raising our rates and pushing us to do something to cut its losses. If our prior track record of lightning damage had held, we might not be insured anymore, and we would definitely be paying much higher premiums. We were at the point where we had to do something. A sharp point in a strong electrostatic field will leak off electrons by ionizing the adjacent air molecules, providing the point's potential is raised 10,000 volts above that of its surroundings. DAS employs the point discharge principle by providing thousands of points that simultaneously produce ions over a large area, thus preventing the formation of a streamer, the precursor to a lightning strike.