Is harnessing lightning, something with merit?

Question

http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Lightning_Power

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1064/85/

Answer 1

Its been thought of for decades but:

1) The energy - as Ben shows - is not that huge

2) It is highly variable, much more than solar or wind, so would never be able to do anything other than supplement energy generation methods

3) The technology to capture and utilise such a massive burst of energy has yet to be developed

I like the fact that people continue to probe the edges of the possible but think, for now, we'd be better off trying to make other alternatives economically viable first

Answer 2

It sounds like a good idea, but where I am thunder storms occur only about 3-4 max. months of the year, so it wouldn't be a good idea here.  

Answer 3

Its worth something written down, but in practice it is a waste of time and money. The actual power of a single bolt is not as high as you would think. Also, do you have any idea how difficult it would be to "catch" the bolts? They are sporadic and limited to the length of time of the particular storm. You would get a small amount of power in the late spring and summer and slim to none in winter.

Answer 4

Actually no.

The statistics given for a lightning strike are 100 MV and 100 Amps for 20 mS which has a total energy of 2MJ - or about 5 cents worth of energy.  

When the article talks about storms having hundreds of megawatts of energy, that's probably mainly wind.  

The cost of a machine capable of catching a lighting strike and storing the energy would be considerable.

(edit)

Actually I think the numbers given in your link are wrong.  A lightning strike has closer to 10000 amps, not 100 amps, so you could get $5 worth of electricity from a strike.

Answer 5

It would be nice ,but the power is so high it will probably burn every thing up.

Answer 6

nah.  Method of storage is the challenge.

Answer 7

Continuing along the lines of Ben's answer, 100 MV x 10,000 A x 10ms = 10 GJ per strike.  I think on a typical active day (like now, during the summer) the US averages about 1 lightning strike per second, so if all that power were harnessed it would amount to 10 GW.  Substantial, but it's not going to replace our current power.  The situation is quite different during the winter, though, since the frequency of lightning goes way down--there may be days when there are only a handful of strikes per day in the entire US.

Lightning is, indirectly, solar power and the efficiency of conversion of solar power to electrical energy by thunderstorms is very small. Instead of trying to capture the electrical energy of all the thunderstorms (which would cover a very large and not that predictable an area), why not just devote a fixed area of land to solar collection? It would be much more reliable and efficient.

Answer 8

only if u r mad.