Electricity From Lightning

First you have to know where the lightning is... and then the apparatus to 'capture' the power from the energy stored in the storm clouds has to be portable enough to chase the storm around...

So two main problems, how to predict where the storm is and the portability of equipment to capture and store the energy.

But first of all lightning is mostly of the form of cloud to cloud strikes, so any collection of the energy stored in the cloud will be awkward to say the least...

As there seems to be much discussion about how lightning is generated, I think that should be tackled and solved first before we can start thinking about collecting the energy from it??

John.

Some time ago I have seen a desing to discharge the clouds. Simple: take a strong enough laser at the correct wavelength and fire it over a lightning conductor to the cloud. This way, you create a ionized channel through which the cloud discharges. The lightning conductor has to be in front of the laser, so that the electricity goes to ground (or is used somehow) and not to your apparatus. The design was intended to protect power stations from lightning strikes by discharging the clouds before unpredictable natural lightnings occur.

An interesting concept (for preventing lightning) but probably one that would not be feasible anytime in the near term: considering the expense to develop and procure such a laser, the power required to fuel it, and the fact that (contrary to long held assumptions) the distribution of lighting strikes has been found to be more or less random--not towards pointy conductors as was formerly supposed.

There probably isn't any feasible way to harness the power from lightening. The idea of using a laser to ionize the air, to channel the electricity to a storage medium is probably the only way to get any usable energy from storm clouds, but you would probably use more energy using the laser than what would be gained for storage.

Dear John,

Good point. I have a thought to make lightning pulse and direct it to a point. It requires a satellite. You point a beam on ion or laser on a charged clod from up to your power station and ionize the path to make the charge flow after that. It is something like trigger discharge. Now it is your turn to collect the charge. I have done my part. This is also not a joke as Russians were working on drilling a hole through atmosphere using ions for many years and they had high power laser on all satellite. Once few American satellittles were hits, they also started using bombs on their satellitles. All useless satellites finally explod, you know why? Re-entry yes, but there is more to it.

Let's assume we can find the storm and the highly charged clouds...

As is already done at a lightning reasearch centre, we could fire a wire trailing small rocket into the cloud to precipitate a strike down the wire (which of course vapourises) the path of the lightning could be directed into a large, sealed, cylindrical container with one electrode at each end, one end grounded the other end collecting the lightning strike....

Inside the chamber the arc would cause an enormous pressure of the gas / plasma....

Could that pressure then be used to drive a turbine generator??

Just a thought..... John.

Dear John

I must realize that you have lots of brain for sure. You have given very good thought. No it is not easy to burn the rocket by lightning as current through rocket body can be high but due to low resistance, the energy deposited will be very low. Boeing 747 can easily survive a lightning shock.

You don't convert electrical energy into plasma but charge the large array of capacitors spread over few km distance and then draw electricity slowly. All you have to do is to put an insulation sheet of km on earth and place a metal sheet over it that can run few km. This can hold a lot of charge. You can even make it multiple layered.

As entire sheet is on same potential, you can even drive a car on it. You will not get any shock. Birds on electrical wires don't experience any shock.

Imagive the capacitor running to 100s of km on earth surface, As capacitor value increases, the voltage will drop down but energy will remain same.

It may also be possible to make building with walls of capacitors to store charge from lightning. Think of buildings as capacitors. This can get you Nobel Prize and good money. Think of making such thing that never were thought before and are technology for tomorrow. All you need is isolated walls with gas filled in between. You can also heat or cool gas to aircondition the building through this ziant capacitor.

I can also work on storing fusion energy in same way. I always think beyond and possible. We all ahve to discover such ideas that may be future.

Fantasy Land? Too much hashish? or not enough?

Airliners survive lightning strikes by not getting struck by lightning strikes...because they are fitted with lightning arrestors...which, by all appearances (to anyone who has ridden in a 747 travelling through a thunderstorm), operate to remove charges from the atmosphere in proximity of the plane--no charge differential, no lightning leader stroke; no leader stroke, no lightning return stroke. The arrestors, in effect, create mini-lightening (which is observed as a kind of St. Elmo's fire trailing off the wing tips), in order to avert natural, and potentially catastrophic lightning. Nobel prizes are awarded for scientific reaearch and discovery, not for putting together a mechanical contraption and praying it works. Besides, if the mega capacitor proposed could, indeed, cause the polarity and sequence of events of natural lightning to reverse itself, does in not also seem obvious that the Nobel prize for the discover would have very long since have been awarded?

As to bombs on american satellites and Russian attacks on same, as an American or American economic ally, one would seem to be duty bound to make the American as well as the Indian) government aware of these events...before a major confrontation arose. Hope this helps?

I find your thinking flawed Guest #30,

An airliner or any flying object, especially metallic, will take up the same charge as its surroundings. An airplane does not attract lichtning because it takes up the same charge as its surroundings, there is no need for what you call 'lightning arrestors' - whatever they are?!

Airplanes do, of course get in the way of lightning as they are metal and so lightning will take the least resistance path...

St Elmo's fire is not visible on an aircraft unless its from a charge picked up by the friction of travelling through the air. St Elmo's fire is often seen on ships masts where there is a high static field present.

As to your paragraph about the mega capacitor, you seem a little confused... This is an ideas forum, all ideas should be welcomed don't you think?

As to your last sentence "..... hope this helps?" ...... no it does not.

John.

I visited an hydro electric company about 20 years ago that was working on that very problem. The "lightning" was artificially created and they were trying to store the blast in a huge wall of accumulators. Even though they were working with a small human-made lightning, they could only manage to blow said accumulators. Electric companies have been working on this for decades without success. As new technologies are being developped, maybe they have a chance....the ressources are huge but harvesting them is not easy...just my 2 bits..:)

Lightning often strikes radio/ tv towers because they are like "lighning magnets" -sitting on top of hills, all metal and grounded. They put huge inductors in them to slow the pulse down. If they could build a million volt million farad capacitor to catch this pulse...maybe silly thought but who knows?

Lihtning has very high voltages and currents, but for a very brief period.

To use it you would need to transform it and average it.

Any storage would have to be for tens of millions of volts....too costly to make a lot of farads at very high voltage.

In my opinion there is no way to get any significant power from lightning

Not only electric discharges in the range to tens to hundreds x millions of volts, but when the air is ignited (to form the visible component of lightning) temperatures in the range of 15K° to 30K° (27K°-54k°F), as hot as the sun; and beyond the capability of presently known materials which might be used to harness the energy. There would also be the massive shock wave (i.e., thunder up close) to be contended with. It would seem that the only likelihood of success for such an endeavor would be to harness the (potential) energy before the leader stroke--in effect eliminating the lightning discharge altogether. Of course that would necessitate learning to reliably predict, considerably before it happened, the timing and location of a stroke--also a formidable challenge. Equally if not more challenging would be the need to understand the positive benefits (if any) of lightning, or the adverse impacts that harnessing (or eliminating) it might have.

One way I noticed how the energy can be stored is when it hits a tree in a dry forest. The trees start on fire and then a large downpoor of rain makes the wood into charcoal.

Then we just walk around picking it up. Later we can re-burn the nice dry burnt wood.

Easy peasy energy in log length.

Best idea of the bunch, and the only one that's feasible.

Lightning will more probably "strike" from a point of charge differential that is closer, as opposed to farther away (because the path of least resistance is followed), from the location (the focus) in the cloud of largest charge build-up. Thus parts of earth that are higher--i.e., closer to the clouds (such as radio/tv aerial antennas, a taller building among shorter buildings, sailing ship masts amidst the ocean, and mountain peaks among lower lands....)--would be more likely, but not exclusively likely, to be the point from which a main lightning stroke issued. This can be readily inferred from the fact that a spark issues (first and finally) to a discharge point that is nearer rather than farther away--because the "air gap" resistance is less. (Consider, for example, the fact that in an otto-engine fuel-ignition system's secondary circuit, increasing the plug's anode-cathode gap also increases the energy required to fire the plug, and conversely.) Thus, also, the folk notion once held dear that antennas (and umbrellas, and wet trees, etc.) act as "magnets" (i.e., lightning attractors) has in recent years been disproven and abandoned. A bit of thinking through would also lead to the conclusion that, if it was true that lightning is "magnetically attracted," then not just one or a few strikes, but all or most strikes would be caused thereby to issue from the magnet--and not from other items within the area of influence (i.e., from other items/locations within the field) of the magnet. But, imperically, we know that--in a particular locale--those lightning strokes NOT involving (say) an antenna virtually always outnumber those that do. So we are led to the sad conclusion: that if only antennas would, or could, act like magnets, we would not have been deprived of the benefit of "lightning power" for so many decades.

OK, place large rod in ground, ensure it is the tallest structure in area and area is known for repetitive lightning strikes.

At base of rod is an amount of sea water. Then, when lightning strikes rod it travels to water and heats. Then use steam to turn turbine to create a usable form of electricity.

Simple.

Not really: since, with ground strokes, the lighning bolt moves up from the ground, not down to it. Nice try, though. 'Sides, how much steam could be gotten from occasionally heated sea water, in an ocean of sea water? You think they laughed at Noah? Seems this would be a topper?

Lightning travels both up and down from sky to earth and earth to sky when it strikes

I believe this has been seen while testing with spark in the lab. A spark plug under microscope will also show the two directional motion of the grounding effect.

A little clarification...

The beginning of a forked lightning stroke that reaches (towards) the ground, indeed, does commence with a so-called "leader stroke" that follows (usually a succession of forked steps comprised by) the path of least resistance from the cloud to the ground. That relatively slow moving discharge (before visible lightning is observed) leaves a trail of ionized air in its path(s). The ionized path then provides the pathway for the "main stroke," the rapid-moving (c/10), upward discharge(s) carrying enormous energy sufficient to ignite the air and be observed as visible lightning. (Another lightning type, which does not reach the ground but, rather, discharges between areas of charge differential in the cloud(s) is called sheet lightening. With sheet lightning, the (main) strokes are typically obscurred from view, and appear as generalized lighting up of the clouds. So this could be a form that could, in some sense, be said to travel both directions--at high altitude.) All told though, it would seem that the intent behind the thread initiator's question, was that the high energy, visible main stroke (of lightning near the ground) would be the lightning component that was "wished" to be harnessed and stored.

where the bolt of lightning comes from is irrelivant, as long as it touches the rod.

If like a wind farm the are dozens of rods (connected to a lattace array) then with each strike then temp of the water will rise.

OK, i know its hyperthetical but imagine the potential.

However, the downside is the earth dies because humans have yet again interfered with natures delicate balance.

Why bother with such a vain attempt to harness lightning when, the technology exits to Create it. Look into Tesla Coils, that would be a better use of your time.

why create it, there is no need for it.

50,000 bolts occur every second spread over the earth.

Tesla never made lightning. He made continuous AC discharges, as you can see from the web.

Van de Graaf and Wimshurst made low voltage lightning and they charged capacitors to make various discharges. Since lightning can have a very long path. Most if these generator are short strokes, typically 5-10 feet is all. Lightning strokes can be hundreds if times as long.

We can make very long discharges if we want to but it costs a lot of money and would not make any moey or have any valid reason.

If we wanted to we could make man made lightning strokes thousands of feet long, but why? it would cost a lot and make no money

Creating lightning does not mean generating from your power source. It is like artificial rain generated by cloud seeding. You shoot the cloud that already has high charge and the effect is directed lightning pulse. I am giving you billion dollar idea. Power from above is a very good idea.

I believe the guest misunderstood what we are trying to accomplish here; new ways of producing (or harnessing) energy to power homes, businesses, cities etc. OK, I may be mistaken but I believe that I read that a nitrogen laser (low UV band) has the capability of "cutting a hole" through the atmosphere and will channel lightning. These lasers are not expensive and have been around for a while. Another idea:for the moment forget about the bolt and see if there is a way to turn the enormous pressure shock-wave (thunder) into usable power--maybe rows of piezo transducers if close enough...

Or...if the bolt itself was channeled thru a huge inductor; inductors produce a large EMF external to the inductor and if coupled through a secondary winding similar to a step-down transformer, maybe some of the electrical power could be caught and stored..

lasers can make an ionized path for a lightning bolt to follow. However it remains that the duration of lightning is so short that the high peak voltage and current are too small to be useful when time integated because the apparatus to resist millions of volts and tens of thousands of amps for 1-2 microseconds is far more costly than any energy you can capture.

http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm

Hmmmmm Steve-o and Shyam have some interesting ideas there.....

Let's not forget that, as steve-o was saying, there are lots of ways that lightning generates energy....

As well as electrical, we have the noise of the air collapsing following the strike, the light, the heat from the strike not to mention the huge electromagnetic wideband transmission!!

I quite like the idea of a huge capacitor covering the ground, but it would not be very portable would it?

The toy rocket I mentioned to initiate a strike would obviously be disposable as in the real research teams rockets....

I believe the main reason aircraft don't get damaged by lightning very often is because they are similar to a faraday cage, or car, as they are all metal and as they are flying they will take up the charge in the air that surrounds them, so they don't attract lightning, they do get hit though by lightning, but the only damage I've witnessed is a small hole in a wing etc...

John.

Hi John

All that is required to isolate the earth and make another layer that makes capacitir and then you can isolate it or need not worry about it. This makes floor of the city over which city can be built, roads can run, right over the caoacitor which hold the charge. Charge going to earth is lightning. You are creating many poles on the this capacitor to catch the lightning. Well this part of the land is no use for green. It is something you can build on any barren planet including earth where you have nothing. You can infact do this on entire coastal area where lightning is very often. After all it will hit somewhere or the other and all that you need charge to be collected.

If you drop a rocket with large conductor in the charged cloud then that conductor will burn for sure. This is because it will face large charge difference due to its length.

You can think of harvesting 100V/m potential available right on the earth all 365 days of the year. Can you perhaps look into this parts. We usually keep the large capacitors poles shorted as they may get charged in air. Let us say if you run two electrodes, one at ground and one above 300m building then you can measure 30000V across it. Assuming that current is 1uA then also you get a solid 30mW energy per second to charge a capacitor. In 10 hours you will get 300mW. To increase current, you need to have a lage disk on top of the building to get perhaps 1mA. That will make it 300W in 10 hours. Is this Ok for you. Looks it is less than solar power you may get from small solar panel of US$100. In fact this technique was never used on earth.

You can bounce the laser off of mirrors. One mirror aimed 90 degrees up then parallel 1 meter off the ground , distance of 1KM, I doubt that the lightning would follow the beam back to the laser. The mirror would (of course) have to be replaced after each hit.

Can any one answer that first on why lightning always moves towards earth? It may strike in many paths, but most of then shower towards earth. Any role of earth magnetic field in it?

Perhaps the 100V/m potential that always exists between the earth and the ionosphere may be good cause for it. So we already have this huge capacitor inside which we are living all the time. Man in a capacitor sounds funny, but that is what I feel now I am.

Looks if you have a ziant coil running to say 100km diameter and then thurder bolt hits the ground, then you will have that induce emf in the coil like the same way we use current sensors. Now you have this coil ends where you can have a power station. Perhaps a core of that size, with lots of spiral windings can make this. I am not sure if magnetic field that far will be effective. Sounds a silly idea.

I think that kite idea is much better. I have used a balloon up to 10km so kite or balloon can reach the coud. But will it be inside a cloud waiting for a thunder bolt? Huh.

I think those believe in GOD can be invited to get some energy from GOD. I will like to get fusion reactor technology from GOD. We now use Thorium and we have for another 400 years. We are going to breed this so we may get along for another 400 years. Perhaps India is getting greedy to get more. Like America always want more oil for nothing. I will like to have a car that can run on Fusion Energy. I don't like oil and smoke. Why to think small.

correct me if ime wrong but did whats his face not harness lighting by flying a kite .by all accounts it worked very well as an incinerator ,mybe we could use it to vapourize the rubbish in india.If we new where it was coming from

I believe that you are referring to Benjamin Franklin. I don't know what you're referring to about rubbish in India. Yes, if the stories are accurate and I remember them correctly, the key actually turned red from heat indicating a real possibility of energy conversion here if done correctly and to a larger scale.

Keep it simple.

Gentlemen of this thread:

These are fascinating musings and grand ideations, but can we first get our definitions straight? So this humble guest won't be so bewildered?

First: could we agree that "lightning," by virtue of its "visible" light is, in fact, only the return stroke component of a full lightning event consisting of visible and non-visible components?

Second: that, accordingly, since the visible return stroke follows the ionized path of the unseen leader stroke, and follows it back to the point of lightning event origination in the cloud, then the visible/return/main lightning strokes that we can observe to seemingly contact the ground or ground fixtures must travel away from the ground and not towards the ground?

Third: that, because the very-much-higher-energy, visible, main stroke that we observe travels at such huge velocity--so fast, in fact, that the human eye and brain are unable to perceive its direction of travel (in much the same way one cannot actually distinguish that a wall does not illuminate before a flashlight aimed at it is switched on)--we can easily find ourselves psychologically pre-disposed to assume that the visible lightning stroke travels away from the cloud? That we might not realize, or might find it difficult to accept--because the visible lightning is viewed from afar--and because in so viewing it our gaze is directed skyward rather than earthward when we see lightning--and because we sometimes see (sheet) lightning that seems both to originate aloft and to terminate aloft: that our perception based on such innate conditionings of perception might, in fact, be the opposite of what actually transpires in a lightning event? That we are conditioned by experience and unheeded behavioral manifestations to interpret lightning as travelling from sky to ground when, in fact, it is altogether possible that the visible bolts we see in less that the blink of an eye might actually travel from ground to sky? That there is no reason based on visual observation to dispute that it travels upward from the ground?

If consensus could be achieved regarding these definitions and explanations, then a greater insight might also be gained as regards the accounts and stories surrounding Ben Franklin and his kite experiment. So let us assume, for the sake of discussion, that we do have consensus...and take a closer look at the Franklin phenomenon. First a few points to consider:

1 As a successful printer/publisher, BF had the materials and means: to construct a kite; and to draft and publish his own account of the experiment.

2. To this writer's knowledge no verifiable independent account to the experiment has been reported.

3. No peer review of BF's published account of the experiment...or repetition...has been published, or reported to have occurred.

4. There was no report of personal injury or property damage, as might have been expected if a lightning main stroke was conducted to the key by the kite string.

5. There is no account, by BF or anyone else, of how it might have been possible, either, to launch or maintain a kite aloft during a storm; or for the kite to have reached the altitude of a thundercloud from which a lightning bolt might be conducted down the wet (and therefore heavy, more kite-flying impeding) string.

Given all this, and assuming that the kite was acually flown just before or during a storm, and assuming the spark on the key did happen: what is the maximal supportable conclusion that could be derived, with reasonable confidence, from the experiment?

There would be a strong basis to refute any hypothesis (or definitive conclusion) other than: (a) that the experiment only "detected" a static charge build-up in the atmosphere--either within a stratiform cloud formation (more likely) or at considerable distance below below a thundercloud; and (b) that the experiment was able to demonstrate an apparent (that is, possible) relationship between static charge buildup in the atmosphere and the conditions ripe for generation of lightning.

On the other hand, had BF been injured or killed, or had substantial property damage occurred, then a hypothesis could have been drawn that (1) lightning is attracted to a conductor; and (2) that the visible stroke travels away from a point of origin within the cloud. Since this did not happen and Ben went on to attain a ripe old age, and yet electric current was conducted by the kite string, a more reasoned hypothesis would hold that the extreme-energy, visible component of lightning does not travel away from a point of origin in the cloud. So, if one end of a lightning bolt is perceived to flash at a point in a cloud, it must be that the bolt is (more or less) terminating, not commencing, at that point

OK That sounds like a possibility.

Now to support your reverse concept, when someone's hair stands on end just before a strike (so to speak) support this reverse flow?

This may be of interest

www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/299/5607/694.pdf

Process starts in this way.

1. You have a high field in two sets of plates (made of ionized water molecules) in two sets of clouds by their friction in reverse motion or turbulance.

2. Normally top layer is negatively charged and bottom (one towards earth) is positively charged. Call it Shyam's Hypothesis.

3. This high electric field makes the electrons to accelerate to wards positively charged plate. with high kinetic energy which is increasing with each mm it moves.

4. It ionizes more atoms and gets more elecrons on the way. Perhaps reaches a multiplication factor of 10^6 to 10^10 level in about a micro-second.

5. Some ionized atoms capture free electrins and emit photons of the binding enegy and some generate x-rays and some generate visible flash

5. Most of the atmosphere is positively charge below towards earth as earth has already collected lots of electrons. This makes the thunder bolts to continue to wards the earth as log as there is electric feild helping it. If that does not happen then ther bolt dies in the sky itself and never reached earth.

6. If there is some insulation on earth then it will get positively polarized due to negative charge above. Capacitor formation.

7. As thunder bolt is high frequency AC, it finds low impedance path and affects the capacitor and discharges energy in the earth.

8. If there is conductor on earth, then the hit must be only due to acceleration and potential difference in the local zone. Must find potential favouring it to move towards earth. I have some problem understanding this here and needs research data.

9. Looks the thunder bolt slows down very badly when it reaches earth even though it may be in ms time domain enough a flash for eye but not as fast as it was above when it was created and then became very fast in between. Some time you should see the thunder bolt turning into fire ball rolling on insulated surfaces and never moving to wards earth and may survive several minutes, which is negatively charged. This should happen. Shyam's Hypothesis. You can look into some research data on this.

10. Most of the positive charge is left above and neutralized by free electrons shucked from below. Reversed current formation. This may also make the charge or electrons on the earth to go up at some point to fill the gap of charge difference, but very slow process. Magnetic field also must play a role in charge motion and such charge exchange may be greater near the poles, They may be canals of charge flow from earth to above for electrons and above to earth for positively charged atoms.

I am nearly completed with this my primary thinking. You can discuss it among others.

You can also think about that ionospahere charge and where is the other part of the charge. How much is the potential difference? Does it come to 100V/m as I said belore?

I think we have become a bit side tracked....

I don't think the direction of the lightning is of any concern to extract power from it.

What is needed is to intercept the lightning before it discharges to earth?

This would involve extracting the energy stored in the cloud formation, possibly by the use of some form of collecting array able to be moved around within the the cloud, extracting the potential build up of charge and collecting the charge in some form of storage system able to be used on the ground?

John.

I agree that we want to intercept the lightning and find the way to use it. However we must also know what lightning dose and how it works like the posts above are referring to.

We want to understand all aspects of what something is and then we can make intelligent decesions on how to move forward with design of the machinery we want to build.

I would be willing to experiment with rod and capacitor combination units.

I think we can be aligned with random strikes. I would consider developing a system that used lightning strikes in a deverter. It would direct excess power to ground.

In other words like a train wreck of 100 boxcars full of cattle in my home town. One of the front boxcars left the track and all the energy behind the engine did not follow the engine with two boxcars that continued to travel on good tracks. Only two boxcars delivered the cattle to a place where they were converted into $50.00 a plate dinners.

Good thought John.

An inexpensive experiment might be to fly a large metallic weather balloon tethered by conductive wire to an insulator form earth, insert a ground rod into earth and measure the potential difference between the two before and during a storm. I may have to do this. We have had some lightning activity in this area recently. I will definately keep my distance and try to rig up datalogger of some sort to record the results.

The only problem that I can forsee is keeping the stability of the balloon relatively constant without it blowing all over the place. Storms of this type are usually accompanied by winds.

This is in reply to your part of the discussion and also a few others approaching the whole subject from a more technical as opposed to "lunatic fringe" perspective. After all if we never approach this thing from the point of view of being dead serious about it and basing it on firm scientific principles upon which we rest every other part of our science then it all remains a pipe dream doesn't it? First, one of the other bloggers was talking about the immense technical problems involved in building capacitors huge enough and of the right materials etc., that could carry the levels of energy we're talking about here. Well, go back and read your basic electrical theory--if you want to increase capacitance in a circuit you add further capacitors IN PARALLEL. So the way to go here is to have a huge "bank" of caps IN PARALLEL with respect to each other.

Secondly, on this question of this "thunderstorm and lightning" thing we all can't agree on: one thing that HAS to be true as regards how lightning forms, why it forms in the first place and what makes it discharge and why it discharges the way it does etc. etc.-- one thing that HAS to be going on here is a huge capacitance set up between charges in the ground and charges up higher; thusly and as a side note here, when there IS a discharge you darn well KNOW that plasma phenomena are taking place in the air that is travelled through REGARDLESS of whether something travels upwards or downwards. You can take that to the bank. So then, if we indeed ARE talking about a tremendous capacitance field if you want to call it that, I see no reason at all from where I'm sitting why it WOULDN'T be possible to, given the properly set up apparatus, to "channel" some of the energy within this field on down the path. I MAY be wrong about it but as far as my knowledge goes it is a possibility that adheres to all known laws of physics.

Lastly, if you DID construct a huge bank of caps, if it was out in the open you'd want to shield it with a plate that would act as your "collector/distributor" to each cap--this could easily be set up. I'm "doodling" around with a sytem design of my own, but here let me just say that it is my belief that we have pretty much everything we need for the most part to go the next step without really harming nature all that much. The trick is to be, not a little, but a LOT more ECLECTIC about how exactly we're approaching this whole problem of large-level energy production to begin with; to me, for instance, one of the HUGE things we could and should capitalize on is the ability we have to transduce energy--if we start specializing more in basic research about exactly how--cost effectively of course--we can start doing serious "energy harvesting" in the field of , e.g., wasted heat--in other words, if we could design a mainstreamable class of apparati that we could emplace anywhere there is a process goilng on that generates and wastes a lot of heat, and transduce it back into electricity and feed it back to the "grid".....we HAVE to start thinking like that...but anyway good luck all and it IS one heck of an interesting little ride...my thinking is that we really really ARE gonna see some TREMENDOUS things happen in the near future, that is if we don't blow ourselves up first. I mean, we have a tremendous knowledge of and capacity to manufacture semiconductive materials with really great negative resistance coefficients with increasing temperatures, we KNOW that silicon carbide is a tremendously promising material, etc. etc. I just really don't see why we yet HAVEN'T broken through... Then again it is easy to be an armchair critic...

Hmmmmm Does your 'caps lock' key sometimes get a bit sticky??

Dear John, Steve, and sonteot

I will like to point out that your thoughts were to prove that the idea of using electricity from natural vast energy impulse resource of lightning pulse is possible rather than using it in real sense to build a power station. This has been proved by two scientists almost 100 years ago so you can simply verify it now. Only playing safe is good enough as all those tried earlier also played it safe.

It is not much of current we are talking about but of million volts, which with just 1A can dump millions of watts of energy.

I got one new idea is to have a rocket with lots of carbon particles and release all that along with its jet plume all the way up to the cloud and then you will have this lightning coming back to the starting point. Now, dump it is some ziant inductive capacitive tank structure and use it slowly. Losing a rocket once a while is OK. It is also possible to shoot the rocket downwards from above from a satellitle through the charged clouds towards earth. I think one can easily build a static electricity detector for the clouds to shoot at right time.

If all this event of lightning and charge formation is of milli second time and charge generation is like a track or what happens in the bubble chamber for the charged particles, then very little chance to use it. Rocket plume can keep the path conducting for about an hour even in storm so that should be a good time for bringing lots of power to the earth. Drfting of plume above will not be a problem as track of plume will point to almost same zone of the earth. With proper local ionization of the air by some radioactive source, lightning pulse can be directed from drifting plume to a point.

For small experiment that is not what is required.

Cloud seeding is a common experiment done for an artificial rain. Hence these people entering into clouds are not harmed by the cloud charge and rarely one gets a lightning hit. This lightning image is from www.google.com with thanks.

I found this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning

"The first process in the generation of lightning is the ejection of charged particles from the sun in what is called the solar wind."

Now that makes, that charge is not present all the time and friction theory is so-so.

"Steven Cummer, from Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering, said, "These are higher energy gamma rays than come from the sun. And yet here they are coming from the kind of terrestrial thunderstorm that we see here all the time."

We really do not know what causes that lightning. However, we know that it happens in the clouds. Some think it is due to ice there.

Hence, artificial lightning pulse trigger is totally ruled out and also clouds are not moving charged and it is a pulse effect of cosmos and not local. What we hear sound is just the spark noise. This wa can also hear on ground when electrical wires are shorted.

We can take the event as random and now we can plan once again.

Estimated maximum current is 30000 to 100000 Amps. Time is too short.

Is there any method to convert energy from the lightning to any other form so that we can store and use it when there is a blackout (power failure)?

Ahh, the original question...........

New idea, forget the rod principle, and think of the blanket.

Say 100m x 100m. Now if the blanket is made of a material like, foil, gold, carbon for instance, then the collectable engergies wont be localised but spread over a 1km² area.

Just another idea

I believe that the strike would vaporize the area of the blanket that it hits unless the blanket is 1 meter thick titanium;it may even melt that. 30 to 100 KAmps (as Shyam said) is a lot of current. Also as John said we want to be up in the air collecting the charge and storing it before it discharges to ground. I think that's a better idea--others may differ from my viewpoint. How about a giant pyramid (got the idea from below) where the charge would evenly disperse down the sides making it more manageable?

There is another problem with that idea.

When ionization takes place due to high energy particles, it generates both positive and negative ions very close by and they can move on a track or there is track formation and all along it has both types of charges ionized free like in plasma but not separated in large space. To collect these, you need another field to make them move. You can make them move along a kite rope, that is a conductor connected to earth potential. This will make the current to flow for sure even when there is no large lightning reaching earth. Only in storm you can't make kite fly. But it is a good idea like catching a fish, you catch electricity from a cloud. This sure works and that were early experiments with kites and wet rope that made current to flow and spark to form. This can also be some what continuous tapping of charge. Life of charge carriers is short in milli seconds only but they may be available as and when storm of particicles injected. This can also happen even without coulds at low level.

If ou do this experiment then make sure these precautions without fail.

The end portion of the rope must be insulated to about 5m from your body, while line to kits can be made conducting. Connect another conductor to earth like a rod. Bring the conducting wire to the kite near to that rod and keep away yourself using totally non-conducting rope (do not use an insulated copper wire but only insulation - no copper inside this safety rope). You will pass several thousands of volts from sky to very near you. Cover your hand with some conducting frame and ground that directly into earth. This will avoid any shock to your body in case stark moves towards your body and not the earth rod. Metal caged body will not get shock. Perhaps for experimenting make sure your kite rope has minimum 100M ohms to 1GOhms resistance and is not a fully conductor as conductor will really bring the lightning directly into you. 1G Ohms will minimize chances of a fetal accident and you will at best see a bright spark. It is not an experiment for amatures of children. Team up with those who are experts and enjoy it.

Shyam,

Thanks for the info. I plan on launching well before a storm hits and be at least 100 meters away, watching through binoculars! I'm not going to get near this thing when active. If continuous tapping is achived, though, there should be no lightning strike right? (Provided the kite or balloon is high enough.) It will be continuous (but fluctuating) DC voltage?

Steve

PS-- I know there is no way of a speculating a definitive outcome of an experiment like this and safety is my #1 priority. Thanks.

See the picture below.

4million volts will spark at 1m distance. I believe that lightning will not let pass more than 20 million volts down the earth. Hence 5m can be safe.

Use some graphite or carbon powder to put over the rope to make it partially conducting. perhaps a salt solution may also do that as that will catch moisture easily.

We need 1G Ohms resistance. In fact that is very small for high voltage. 100mA can kill a man. We are dealing with 100000 Amps nature resource. Remain careful.

You can move the kite rope around the earth pole but remain within 10cm. Perhaps you can have some insulator wood like fixture on the pole to get this distance. Acually 10cm means 400kV spark. It is really near half million volts.

Make your both hands conducting using metal cage connected to ground, when you pull the kite up or down, you may end up touching the conducting rope by mistake and that is fatal. The evil is out there and it may come running in micro seconds any time. Please make sure the rope is least conducting and just enough to get small current down the earth, as it is really very high voltage. It will not burn the rope, as the current will be low for it and over large length, but enough to kill a man. Highly conducting rope will blow like a fuse. Insulating gloves can't protect you but conductor to earth will do so and charge will move fast to the earth.

Yeah, thats it. The air temp around a bolt of lightning is hotter than the surface of the sun but if you put a friggin kite string in the middle of one it wont burn up because it has a high resistance? You are basically creating a shunt. Lets assume the metal gloves and cable or whatever can handle all the voltage and current without burning up before the strike is done. You still have a secondary path through yourself. If even .1% of the strike goes through you that is 2 megawatts. Dead.

Shyam,

Sorry, but like I said, I don't plan on being anywhere near this contraption or flying a kite in a lightning storm. What I'd kike to do is slow siphoning of power from the atmosphere (clouds) at a relatively moderate voltage if possible when the ions are starting to charge/ form before a storm.

Steve

PS_ I may be off line for a few days. Department moving.

Thanks for all the input.

Dear Steve,

While moderate amoung of charge is alwats present due to continuous cosmic rays, you should always take some general precautions such that too much of charge is not pumped. This can be done using only cotton thread, moist a bit but not made of conductor or metal to fly the kite. That is way others have done before.

OK , I feel that we need some closure here! I believe that it is possible to get lightning to strike a tower by locating it on top of a mountain, grounding it, and the location being a "lightning-prone" area. The problem is the conversion process. Mankind does not yet have the technical know-how to convert millions of volts at many KAmps at a short duration (a few msec) to several thousand volts @ several thousand Amps for a longer duration. A converter design of this sort is just is out of our reach? I guess so. Than you so much Renjith C O for starting this fascinating thread and for everyone's thoughts and inputs. See you all on other threads.

Good idea on that last!!--slow siphoning of power as opposed to trying to channel whole "bolts" of lightning or whatever!! I am working on something close to this--a system where you have huge arrays of "collectors" if you want to call them that. My theory is that if you put enough of these things high enough up and make them out of extremely good conductive material, proper surface configurations, etc. you SHOULD be able to MAINTAIN a charge transfer from high up to ground apparatus, if you interconnected a lot of these things in for lack of a better term a "wide are array." Any thoughts?????

I want to make it clear here that lightning is neither light nor sound.

These are after effects of the event. First high energy particle ionizes the air, water. Recombination of ionized particles results into regeneration of the x-rays of high energy from Nitrogen, Oxygen deep electron orbits and some from Hydrogen low energies. After electrons lose energies in multiple collisions, lower evergy comes in visible zone of 2eV to 3eV range. When there are lots of electrons in motion, then you can call it hot due to kinetic energy which may also get transferred to atoms and molecules. High energy stuffs are sure invisible part.

Hot air or plasma gets into pressure pulse that may move like a shock wave resulting into audible thunder bolt.

Now that we know that there is charge and some reason for it to move in some easy path, the lightning moves in tracks a bit zig zag. Event takes enough time. You can see the lightning pulse originating at a plce and moving in about 10ms to 200ms time zone. It is perhaps the ion mobility is not all that high and to travel few kn distance takes real time. Clouds are often with 1km to 10km range from earth and only those are near the earth make it towards earth. While lightning starts before rain starts, it continues while it is raining and giving easy path towards earch. Perhaps droplets of water carry only one kind of charge.

Good information Shyam, Thanks. My perspective, however, is one of transformation, (considering the bolt being plasma+ differing energies.) The utilization process is the one that is the challenge; buffering the amount of power (P=EI) to an applicable level. This may not be possible with current technology. My basic idea is here:

Dear Steve

Excellent design. Put your copyright mark on it.

I will like to make one more point clear about ion temperature. It is not necessary that million degree temperature should burn the things.

If I say the CFL tube light in your is at 5000C then are you not going to touch it or the glas on top of it will melt? Nothing happens when we talk about million degree temperature of the electrons. In fact there temperature is only an energy and greater the energy lesser the possibility of it depositing into the matter. Pany particles cross the entire earth without even touching anything or losing energy.

100 Gy radiation dose can kill a man due to radiation damage but can't raise the temperature even by 1C. High energy particles and ionized plasma energies or their temperature are totally different from some wire evapotation due to electric discharge. It will not even burn a paper of the kite. Just forget that and your kite is all safe there, else you will be getting hot water from sky and not hail storms. It is pretty cool there for engineers and it is very hot only for Physicists.

I think the Idea of collecting energy from the atmosphere using multiple collector arrays connected to high voltage storage capacitor is feasible. One would have to find an ideal location with dry weather to set up a balloon farm to hold the collection electrode plates in the air. The arrays of balloon charge collectors dump their charge into parallel capacitor banks where the're stored and or converted to AC using inverters etc....

You would have to guard such a system from actual lightning strikes otherwise you have a meltdown and damage due to a strike. So you shut down the system during bad conditions and high probability of strikes.

Another thought occurred to me was If you had a large enough array of atmospheric charge collectors , then they would be slowly draining any excess buildup of charge in the atmosphere and potentially prevent a lightning strike condition from building up in the first place ( a secondary benefit ).

Laserlover

Here's a nice portable laser for ionizing the atmosphere to discharge potential Lightning from striking. Do what you wish with the energy if you can harness a discharge. Just joking but check this out " http://newsroom.spie.org/x5329.xml "

I still think a ballon array of atmospheric collectors coupled to capacitor banks would work .

Laserlover

Tell me how that balloon stuff will work? charge is not one kind that you go and collect. It is an ionized media and perhaps some accelerated electrons that will not hold on to a plate as they have lots of energy.

I have seen a documentary on microflashes recorded using ultrahigh speed camera. Looks to me that lots of discharges are taking place that go undetected by normal eye and these flashed are in micro-seconds or at best in milli seconds.

useful power from lightning is a total non starter. There is 1000's of times as much power in the water content if you intercept it a few hundred feet high, and even that water power is marginal. We of course use rain collected in natural catchments for water power.

Sure there is potential, but the product of current and voltage is completely un-manageable, even if you built a tower to be struck a hundred times an hour in a storm you would not get much energy out if for the simple reason that the emf is so high it would destroy any semicinductor capable of managing it and jump around any attampt at winding even a single turn transformer to step it down, let alone a 100:1 step down transformer.

What about heat? make a tower that is just a huge carbon resistor to ground? We all know it explodes trees with flash boiled water. Well, so you flash boil 2 ounces of water 3 times/hour...wowee, what a furnace. The apparent huge power of lightning is an artifact of it's very short duration. If you had a lightning bolt in continuous operation for 1 hour = a whole lot. In fact it is all done in a few microseconds and in that time it is made up of a number of very much shorter duration strokes

My thought was to use small weather balloons, the type that have metalised exteriors to capture the charge in the atmosphere and pass it down to a storage capacitor via a conductive tether such as has been mentionned earlier in this discussion.

I believe you could capture and store those charges in the atmosphere even within a thousand feet altitude. If you have an array of such configurations you multiply the stored energy. You would of course need to take carefull measurements and use design safeguards against potential damage (shutdown if lightning is Imminent ).

You would be capturing electrostatic energy at very high voltages.

What are your thoughts ?

Laserlover

why small balloon? you can make two aircraft fly through a cloud and yet none will collect charge. It is something more than that. You can always collect the staic charge that is 100V/m with air insulation leakage current level. Then there is this plasma formation. How do you intend to extract charge from plasma. You can create plasm in low pressure zone on earth the way CFL works and then see if you can get any charge out of that. I am sure you will get none as mean free path of the electrons is too small.

To collect charge you have to make something like GM Tube or large ion chamber with some your own voltage source to make the ions to move where you want them to move. This will work but you will need million volt source of your own first to pull them.

It doesn't have to be a small balloon. I just chose it as an example of what's available if somebody wanted to test the principle. If you filled a mylar metallised weather balloon with helium gas and tethered it via a conductive variable length of string, silk, cotton (coated with graghite etc...) whatever works best to conduct (with least resistance) the charge from the dry air in the atmosphere. Couldn't that charge be stored within a high voltage capacitor if the tether is attached to the positive plate and the other plate of the cap is at earth ground level. Plasma (hot ionized gas) is something you want to avoid as it would likely damage the setup.

You keep on talking about 100v/m . Is this some constant charge available in the atmosphere under average dry windy conditions ?

Laserlover

There is an average vertical voltage gradient of 100V/meter.

It varies a lot, read among these.

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22voltage+gradient%22+%2Batmosphere&btnG=Search

SInce air is a good insulator the current is in the femtoamperes until you get a bolt.

Dear Aurzone

You are very smart and I give five points to your answer. Femtoamps for what cross section? He is talking about very....big....balloon. Will it not be microamps?

Dear Laserlover

Yes, this 100V/m is right on the earth surface to upwards. The moment you stand on the earth, it falls across you being an electric pole connected to earth by 10k Ohms resistor equivalent or something that may be one's resistance of the body. Hence, you do not get shock but it is there all the time. 10m up you get 1000V so 100m you get 10000V and for 1km you get solid 100000V and 10km give a million volt and that is what is equivalent to lightning. The moment you raise the baloon with 1million voltage insulated cable by 10km, you will get this 1 million volts passing through your cable for sure. It may be even greater as potential above may not be linear and much higher than you can imagine. This potential attracts the lightning towards the earth. This is a giant natural ion chamber and we live on its inner electrode which is earth.

If you use a balloon that is made of aluminum top or mylar film and connect with conducting rope then perhaps the electron shower will be collected by it due to Farady cup formation and will work. Then that will not only collect the lightning pulse but also leak current from the 1 million volt potential gradient across the sky from earth. This part will work even in no cloud zone.

Balloons with topes up to 10km are available for this purpose but were not used with conducting wire. We use silk fiber to hold the balloon. I am manufacturing environmental survey instruments that go into such earth rope tied balloons. Making rope conducting will call for an accident.

SHyam, Resistance is far more than 10K, hundreds of megohms is more like it

Dear Aurizone

The human body resistance is almost of the order of 10k Ohms. Only sime people show lower and some slightly more. If you are wet, then it is very very low. The potential near earth dip across us due to this conductive nature of human body. Even if we are not shorting the earth, we will be shorting the air around us.

Hi Shyam,

I can certainly understand why you don't want a conductive tether to those weather balloons. In my case that is the desired result.

Do you think it's possible to design a conductive tether that's strong enough to withstand the wind load yet still have a high conductance, say using carbon nanoparticles to coat silk string ?

If a 1 kilometer length of silk was coated with carbon nanotubes it should be within a reasonably low resisitance to conduct a charge to earth bound storage capacitors and charge pumps, converters, inverters, transformers, substations to an AC grid eventually.

What do you think ?

Laserlover

still a non starter. What other forces might act on the tethered sail.

wind, rain, hail, and let us not forget a lightning bolt which would totally vaporize a large area around the strike point and the tether point by ohmic heating. This is after all a conductive membrane

See this article using carbon nanotubes in an organic solar application

" http://optics.org/articles/news/13/1/27/1 "

Couldn't carbon nanotubes be bonded to silk rope to create a highly conductive tether strong enough to hold a large balloon (metallised to capture the charge) and provide low enough resistance to maximize the amount of energy that reaches the earth bound capacitor ?

Your thoughts and opinions please/

Laserlover