mneary

That would have been about 0.01 Joule.

Super_voip

While Ben Franklin did do a lot of work with lightning I've seen articles that said he only proposed the kite experiment and never conducted it. Several people reading his work did attempt his proposed experiment and were killed or badly injured.

Sceadwian

No electrical device perhaps, harness it to a heating element of some kind and heat a tank of water. I imagine it would be exceptional difficult to design such a system though.
Mythbusters did Franklins experiment. Even on a 'normal' day they were getting a couple thousand volts, just from the wind blowing against the string. Current was probably not much though.

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adaminc

You might be able to use lightning to melt a salt, and use that to create steam, like how some of those new solar thermal plants are using the sun to melt salt and generate power from steam turbines.

uaefame

To be frank with you, my country in a whole year there is no rain like 4 times a year sound dry. Yup its dry. I think this kind of alternative is good is we can build a prototype to store impulse of high current with high voltage.

From my battery theory, The faster you charge a batter the less capacity you can store.

From this it seems battery techology for lighting strike is useless.

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mneary

As I posted earlier, each home that you would power with lightning would need a direct strike every 2 weeks. That is, if you could actually capture all of the energy (100% efficient).

At a still aggressive 1% efficiency, you would need a direct strike every 4 hours. On every home powered this way.

DigiTan

I read an article last year about possibily using ionizing lasers to divert lightning strikes from populated areas. Florida State University has been using rockets and conductive wires to accomplish the same feat for years. The laser idea was presented more as a tool for mitigating injuries and property damage. But if you're going that far, I say why not try to harness it as an energy source.

If you simplify a lightning bolt as a line of current, and have it travel through the center of a conductive loop; you can apply Biot-Savart's and Ampere's laws to model the system as an air-core transformer. And maybe it could be stored using those huge power factor compensation capacitors. With the right materials engineering, I wouldn't be surprised if part of that energy could be stored and sold to the market.

I think the American Gulf Coast would be a prime candidate for this kind of study. Some of these cities average 8 to 16 ground strikes per square km annually (source: NOAA). It's probably a generation away, but if it's useful, I'm behind it.

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mneary

Still, the NOAA's figures suggest that you need to harvest all lightning strikes at 100% efficiency, for about 300 square km to supply a single home.

Useful?

DigiTan

Since when is alternative energy only about powering homes? With the right materials, a system like that could use each bolt as a secondary power source. Something that independent could stay running when the existing power infrastructure isn't available.

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bmachining

To harness Lightening u need a Flux capacitor!!

Well it worked in Back to the Future. hehehehe

mneary

"Power xxx homes" is commonly used as a benchmark, which is why I wrote it.

I agree that lightning is independent, but I prefer to say undependable. It's been about 45 years since I've been a building affected by a lightning strike. As an alternate source of energy, it's way down the list.

rjvh

in my opinion lightning is just a entertaining feature from mother nature

it does facinates me and I respect its power but as we conclude already it's not a comercial option

Robert-Jan