Why can’t we harness lightning energy?

It is interesting to note that not all answers agree with the electrical charge calculation.

1. According to at least one answer, each lightning strike averages 5 billion Joules. You might think that sounds a lot. If we assume that there is no loss in storage or transfer, then this is approximately 1,400 kWh. This is converted to kWh units electrical energy that we know and use every day (household electricity meters).

2. Over a year, lightning strikes are approximately 1.4 billion. Of those, only 25% are ground strikes. Most (75%) of them are intra-cloud and cloud-cloud and outward towards upper/outer atmospheric and cannot be harnessed. This leaves just 350 million lightning strikes that can be harnessed. Again, this assumes an impossible 100% harnessing all lightning strikes, i.e. There is no loss in capture transfer or storage. That’s 490,000,000,000.00 kWh/Year.

3. The world consumed around 20,279 64,000,000 kWh in 2009. The world uses 40 times more electrical energy than all possible (but impossible) land strikes. The world will have enough electricity for 9 days with all the lightning that we could hypothetically capture over a year. This is a ridiculously high estimate of the power that lightning can provide to the world, as we are unable to harness or capture 100%.

It’s not feasible, or even practical enough! This should be enough to answer the question as to why.

There’s more!

To see the cost of doing this:

We would need to place extremely tall towers (e.g. Eiffel tower) about a mile apart in order to capture every lightning strike (land only). This grid would cover the entire planet. Yes, strikes can occur across the entire globe over oceans and seas. This is one tower per 200,000,000 square miles.

Equipment to capture electrical energy from a strike would need to be able to deal with the extremely high charge in 30 milliseconds (approximately the duration of a lightning bolt). Heavy conduction rods are required to handle this kind of instantaneous power. They also need heavy duty electrical circuits, and large arrays of storage super capacitors that could capture all of it in that time.

Even though we don’t yet have the technology for electrical energy storage, let us assume that we do. Also, since most electrical systems are less than 70% to 80% efficient when operating optimally, and we don’t have prototypes of such a system so we don’t know what efficiency it would be, then we can assume that the cost of each tower and storage of electrical circuitry would be approximately US$500,000. This is conservatively low, assuming mass production and efficient manufacturing processes. This is US$100 Trillion for only the land equipment, i.e. There is no flotation device available for the ocean or sea versions. There are also ongoing maintenance costs, installation costs, and wire grid that connects all towers. This will create havoc with air traffic and other industries. . . It will cost more money than the world! !

A year of electric power is a rare maximum of 9 days. (more likely to be less than 2 days due system losses). !

Wait… I think the explanation was clear enough halfway to the top of the page.

It is impossible!

For a more precise answer to your question, please use the following link:
Yes, it is possible, but it wouldn’t go far enough to meet our power needs.

The majority of the planet gets sunlight every day, so one hour of sunlight has the same amount as a year. The sun has more power than we have and all we need is our roofs to store it. Particularly with the improvements and efficiency of solar panels.

Ask yourself the question: “Why don’t we cover all the roofs with Solar panels?” “!

 

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