why ESE lighting protection important. This article shows a 5-year performance review of an early streamer emission (ESE) air terminal lightning protection system for a large-scale photovoltaic (PV) power plant. The differentiation of a Franklin lightning protection system and the ESE lightning protection system was evaluated for the PV power plant. The ESE lightning protection system was preferred to be executed in the PV power plant. In an area of 150, 000 m 2 , the calculated total capacity of the PV power plant was 8 MWp in Phetchaburi Province of Western Thailand. A Franklin-type lightning rod was also planned to be executed in this PV power plant. The Franklin-type lightning rod involved 122 pieces; however, the ESE-type lightning rod involved only 11 pieces. The technical design of the Franklin-type rod followed the standard of the Council of Engineers, Thailand, while the ESE-type lightning rod followed the NFC17102 standard of France. The approximate cost of installation was a basic differentiation to choose the lightning protection system. The total installation cost of the Franklin-type lightning rod was USD 197, 363.60, while that of the ESE-type lightning rod was USD 44, 338.16. The lightning structure was applied to the lightning arrester in the power plant to give fine protection, through which the equity of the pole to the mounting position is needed to improve the system performance. The outcome of the simulation also displayed that the shading effects of the Franklin-type rod were larger than those of the ESE-type rod. The installation cost of the Franklin-type lightning rod was 4.45 times more costly than that of the ESE-type lightning rod. Thus, the ESE lightning protection system was preferred to be applied in the PV power plant. From the list of recorded data of the 5-year (2016–2020) performance of the ESE lightning protection system, there were three incidents of a lightning strike on the PV power plant. The ESE lightning protection system more effectively protected and prevented the lightning strike to the PV power plant. Thus, this analysis can help with and support the choice of a lightning system for the protection of broad-scale PV power plants in the future