3 ms·

Imagine if one day humans could catch and store that huge power and reuse it afterwards.

• 0_____0 4y ago
  Prior Art: Brown, E.; McFly, M. (1985). Energy Harvesting of Atmosphere-Earth Electrostatic Discharge in Spatiotemporal Displacement Research
  • dotancohen 4y ago
    1955. In 1985 they had access to Libyan plutonium. The 1955 lightning experiments were a modification to the earlier 1985 plutonium-powered equipment.
• saalweachter 4y ago
  Eh, lightning bolts are impressive on the scale of individuals but not on the scale of civilizations. The standard figure for the standard lightning bolt is 1 billion joules, or about 250 kWh. If we assume this lightning bolt was a million times bigger, that's 250 GWh, which is a big number, but like 1/500th the annual crypto usage. Meanwhile, there are about 1.4 billion lightning strikes per year, so the total lightning energy is about 400 TWh/year. That's nothing to sneeze at, about 40% of China's annual electricity usage. But to harvest it you need a global system to perfectly capture every joule from every bolt (or more likely, bleed it off before the bolt would form). Assuming lightning strikes are equally likely over land and sea, you lose 70% of your energy right there -- now your peak harvest is 150 TWh. If you have a million installations scattered around the world -- each one harvesting the lightning-energy from about 150 sq km, that's 150 MWh/year, or about 17 kilowatts per installation -- and once you start adding losses and inefficiency you're probably lucky to get 1 kW.
• dboreham 4y ago
  Isn't this what wind power generators are doing?