4 ms·

Next in the agenda: stealing energy from lightning.

• Ericson2314 7y ago
  https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-a-way-to-harness-electricity-from-lightning/ https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-... TIL a lightening bolt is a nickle's worth of energy.
  • enjo 7y ago
    TIL that 1.21 gigawatts is $.05.
    • heavenlyblue 7y ago
      It's 1.21 gigawatts, but only 0.25KiloWatt/hours.
  • TeMPOraL 7y ago
    TL;DR: a literal nickle. The article estimates that a typical lightning bolt contains only about 0.25kWh, which is surprisingly little, if you put it like this. I always thought lightning bolts had something closer to a megawatt-hour, so thanks for clearing that up for me!
    • jsjohnst 7y ago
      A megawatt-hour is enough to power a small/medium data center for an hour. Or to power tens of thousands of homes for an hour. A lightning bolt lasts for seconds at best, so not sure why you’d think it’d provide megawatts for a duration of an hour. That would mean the instantaneous current would need to be much higher than a terawatt, which is several orders of magnitude higher than what it is.