TEN350 The waveform that hijacked the IEC lightning standards

Meet Dr. Peter Hasse, 'Mr. 10/350'
Godfather of the 10/350 waveform

In the world of lightning protection, Peter Hasse is a living legend.

Born in 1940, he studied electrical and power engineering at Berlin Technical University, graduating in 1965. He then worked as a research assistant at the local Adolf Attias Institute for High Voltage Engineering until receiving his doctorate there in 1972. A few months later he joined the R&D department of DEHN + Sohne. There he was instrumental in developing a self-extinguishing air-gap of enormous capability and a new theory to justify its use in lightning protection. This was called at the time the “new” 10/350 waveform. In 1981, Dr. Hasse became Dehn’s Managing Director and remained so until his retirement in 2004. Since 2002 he's been on the Board of Directors of a German test laboratory: GHMT AG Bexbach.

Shortly after retiring from Dehn, Dr. Hasse was awarded the prestigious Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Hasse Award Ceremony

At the 2005 awards ceremony Hasse was glorified for turning Dehn + Sohne (a small family-owned company manufacturing lightning rods) into a major international player in the lightning protection market. At the same time he was praised for the “significant role” he had played in influencing the national and international standards-making bodies that dealt with lightning protection.

The praise was not exaggerated. Every account of Hasse's accomplishments contains the same line: "He has played a significant role in national and international standards-making bodies in the area of lightning protection." Just exactly how "significant" had been difficult to determine, because up to now the full extent of his actions in this arena had not been fully catalogued.

For over 20 years, while running Dehn, Hasse was concurrently promoting his new theories and devices to standards writers and getting them written into standards for mandatory use. In 1975, he became a founding member of the VDE (German standard organization) Committee on Lightning Protection (ABB) and shortly thereafter was running it (according to Prof. Dr. Kawamura, President of Japan’s I.E.I.E.) In 1977 Hasse joined the DKE (Germany's representative to the IEC and CENELEC) providing him the springboard needed to become the German spokesperson to both IEC/SC37A "Low Voltage Surge Protective Devices" and IEC/TC81 "Lightning Protection" (which he joined at its inception.)

Move through the Hasse pages that follow (assessible through the links below) and you'll find that it wasn't Thor nor any other god of lightning who gave life to the 10/350 waveform. Neither was it CIGRE nor even the acclaimed Swiss researcher, Dr. Karl Berger.

Lift the veil and one finds the true source of the 10/350 wavefrom to be none other than our own Dr. Peter Hasse.

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