Project Description

Eric Montandon was born in Basel in 1943. He received the degree of Electrical Engineer in 1967. After working for 3 years in the field of industrial electronics for control and safety of power plants and gas turbine stations at Sulzer, Inc. in Winterthur, he moved to the Bernische Kraftwerke, where he was involved with quality control and testing of High Voltage power generation and distribution stations. From 1973 till 1998, he was active for the Swiss Telecom PTT Research and Development Division in the field of Electromagnetic Compatibility. He was the “Special Raporteur” for ITU on Earthing of Telecommunications and was a member of international organizations such as IEC, ITU (the former CCITT), and ICLP in the field of low frequency Electromagnetic Compatibility, specifically in earthing, safety, and lightning protection.

Mr. Montandon is a renowned lightning protection expert. He is one of the developers of the “Hybrid Earth Concept”, a highly reliable lightning protection strategy. In addition, he has developed a lightning simulation method to measure the lightning current coupling into electrical systems installed in buildings. He is also the originator of the Swiss PTT Lightning Localization and Parameter Determination research project in Switzerland. Mr. Montandon is the author of more than 30 scientific publications and technical reports in the field of lightning protection. Since 1998, Mr. Montandon has been retired from Swisscom. He still has been working as a Consultant. In 1998 he was appointed as an honorary member of the Scientific Committee of the International Conference on Lightning Protection (ICLP)