You're a true inventor with a perfect grasp of the principles, that's basically how circuit breakers work! The challenge is to predict the future: sense how hig

You're a true inventor with a perfect grasp of the principles, that's basically how circuit breakers work! The challenge is to predict the future: sense how high the voltage pulse will rise, before it overloads. The speed of light is hard to exceed, at least as we currently understand. The charge will look for a shorter path, so if it can find a way around the long cable, the lightning will probably strike there instead. Now here's one for the engineers. We can tell the future. Musicians change tempo before singing the next verse. ADS-B data tells us when there's a plane coming. Could a "smart" surge protector include a measure of ground noise, to sense local charge differentials, and guess that the next spike is probably lightning rather than a typical mains arc? More sensors yes, but increasing protection only when expected would possibly improve the feedback loop.