With the development of EHV/UHV transmission lines in China

trip-out accidents caused by lightning shielding failures become more frequent

which seriously affect the safe and reliable operation of EHV/UHV transmission and distribution system. Many of the existing evaluation methods cannot meet the current requirements of analyzing the lightning shielding performance in transmission lines

owing to the insufficiency of calculation method

the limit of lightning observation

uncertainties of various key parameters

and criteria and so on. In this paper

the research statuses and progresses of current lightning shielding evaluation methods are expounded and their problems are summarized. Moreover

the opportunities and trends of lightning shielding evaluation methods of transmission lines are analyzed. With the development of long air gap discharge and lightning observation

researches on shielding analysis method in future shall focus on making the methods more thorough and accurate on the basis of the physical microscopic processes of shielding and the measurement of key parameters. This will provide important theory supports for the differentiated lightning protection of transmission lines.