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Wind Turbines induce lightning… There is a potential difference over that height. Lightning strikes are quite overwhelming, but perhaps additional power could

Wind Turbines induce lightning… There is a potential difference over that height. Lightning strikes are quite overwhelming, but perhaps additional power could be gleaned from diffusing the pd across that height. “Two types of lightning can occur, he says: one that starts in a thunderstorm and then propagates downwards, attaching to the turbine tip – called downward initiated lightning – and another, ‘upward lighting’, that happens when the turbine gets very tall and itself starts to generate lightning that wouldn’t otherwise occur.” It would be interesting to see pictures and videos of lightning strikes.

Animats 5y ago
It would be interesting to see pictures and videos of lightning strikes. There are plenty of such pictures. There's a big collection of lightning strike pictures for the Empire State Building, which has been used for lightning studies since 1935. It gets hit about 25 times a year. The headache for wind turbines is carbon fiber. Fiberglas blades are good insulators. Aluminum blades are good conductors. But carbon fiber blades are resistors, so they can be heated and burnt by lightning. This is also a headache with aircraft using carbon fiber. In both cases, metal has to be embedded to provide a conductive path.
- xyzzy21 5y ago
  This is the same feature that increases lightning damage on composite body aircraft. Additional metal (weight) has to be added to shield and conduct lightning away from sensitive electronics.