Severn Trent Green Power published a statement on their Facebook page saying they could "confirm that at around 19:20 this evening, a digester tank at its Cassington AD facility near Yarnton, Oxfordshire, was struck by lightning resulting in the biogas within that tank igniting.
A lightning rod or lightning conductor (British English) is a metal rod mounted on a structure and intended to protect the structure from a lightning strike. If lightning hits the structure, it will preferentially strike the rod and be conducted to ground through a wire, instead of passing through the structure, where it could start a fire or cause electrocution.
The principle of the lightning rod was first detailed by Benjamin Franklin in Pennsylvania in 1755,[2] who in subsequent years developed his invention for household application (published in 1757) and made further improvements towards a reliable system around 1760.
This seems like the sort of thing that one could reasonably equip a facility with large tanks of explosive gas with in 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_rod
This seems like the sort of thing that one could reasonably equip a facility with large tanks of explosive gas with in 2023.
EDIT:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaerobic_digestion
That seems to have pointy pole things extending above their tanks.
This is a picture of the facility that just had the explosion:
https://www.stgreenpower.co.uk/assets/images/banners/Severn-Trent-Green-Power-cassington-AD-page-banner.jpg
I do not seem, at a cursory glance, to see any pointy pole things extending above the tanks at the facility that just had the explosion.
Yeh, seems like an oversight. Maybe they thought that as the tanks were metal they wouldn’t need it?