Storing Electrical Energy from Thunder

One problem: it only occurs during storms. You'll need a far more reliable energy source to be economically viable.

Limitations

No control on timing.

Too high to arrest.

If we try, aviation problem as every antenna can be miles high.

How to convert such a high surge in low voltage so that we can store it

May be many more limitations.

Lightning is replicated in many high voltage laboratories around the world every day.

Impulse generators replicate lightning, switching and other unidirectional polarity voltage waveshapes by charging banks of capacitors in parallel through charging resistors and discharging them in series through spark gaps. Most high voltage impulse generators are multi-stage Marx generators.

Lightning collection and storage would require a world wide grid of so called "room temperature" super conductive cables, and large capacity superconductive coils to hold any excess, not that there would be a likely excess not with the world entirely on the grid.

Regards Dragon

It worked for Dr. Frankenstein, even though that outcome was arguably not favorable. It worked in "Back to the Future".

In the real world, all it does is start fires, explode trees, create ozone and make some atmospheric nitrogen soluble enough to aid plant growth. It seems that it would be worth harnessing. The trick would be to convert the huge energy pulse into something useful in a few nanoseconds.

All you need is several thousand loonies wearing aluminum hats running randomly under the storm cloud to catch that spare bolt that hits the ground a loonie.

Tesla showed that the Earth was a giant capacitor- storing electric potential. Lightning is simply electrons returning to their source. Thunder is simply the sound waves from lightning. Any attempt to make use of either has failed so far.

Actually, while there is a lot of power in a lightening strike, there is not that much energy. I calculated that the typical strike would feed a house for about half a day. This is not likely to be useful as the equipment necessary to capture this energy would costs $ millions.

Here is the info from Wikipedia.

Properties of Lightning

An average bolt of lightning carries an electric current of 40 kiloamperes (kA), and transfers a charge of five coulombs and 500 MJ. Large bolts of lightning can carry up to 120 kA and 350 coulombs[1].

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If we use a typical house load of 10KW = 10e3J/S*3600S/h= 36E6J/h. Our typical lightning strike would last 500MJ/36MJ/h = 13.8h

This assume 100% energy recovery and power conversion which is impossible.

Forget about using this energy source. It is a dead end. There are other candidates much more interesting and less likely to kill you on the spot...

Related but not on the same note.

One effect that I found out from Art Bell's radio show was from his short wave radio antenna array. He made a huge antenna array but when he went to hook it to his radio he kept getting shocked. I mentioned it to my Cousin who is a Powerline engineer and he said it is a common effect in powerlines.

I've wondered if this could be a viable source of power?

Brad

Yes, we could drain some energy from the static electricity floating around in the air. The problem is how expensive this antenna will be per KW produced and the need to protect the energy converter from lightening strikes.

There are thousands of potential energy sources around us. Unfortunately, only a few are viable for the moment.

Regards,

Marco

The ARRL manuals instruct even us as novices to ground our antennas.

milo

That is probably when he got shocked.

I'd have to check because I don't remember just what all the particulars are. It did seem like his towers had a mile of antenna wire between them.

Brad

Yep.

Must ground antenna!

milo

Most answers, if not all, assume that you are converting lightning to electric power, and the shortcomings are all explained well.

However if you had a place on earth where lightning struck regularly, and you constructed a tower to attract the lightning to a foundation of resistive rocks, then it may be possible to draw useful heat from the rocks

You're right. We are not thinking of capturing the kinetic energy of the thunderclap either, Which a strict reading of the question would imply. Nor using photovoltaic cells to capture the light from the lightning.

milo

I saw a documentary where lightning was mapped by satellite. Florida was the place to be for lightning strikes.

The only remotely possible system I could imagine would be to use lightning to charge a capacitor, then use the capacitor to recharge batteries. Designing, building, and testing the capacitor would require considerable amounts of expertise, expense and Excedrin!

That made for a lot of interesting reading. But it seems when its all said and done the short answer is No,no,no,no.

It does make for some good energy at my house as it scares my wife to the point that I cant pry her off.

It would probably be much more efficient to become some small part of the drug cartel and use your take to buy electricity for those less fortunate.

Hey! ya gotta go with what works!

very good idea, people work for it for many years. Franklen and his companies lead the lighting, which make sound, we call it thunder, with kite. its very dangerous works. however, there are still lots of sciencists work for it. our china has many such sciencists who deal with the lighting, they use rockets lead the lightning., the rocket launched into sky, carry a long wire, when lightning propably ocur. the electric will be led down. sparkling sparkle was very exciting from their vedio.

lightning has huge energy, but its very difficulty to store it. once a day, people invent a set to store it, that will be very good things.

on the lab, we can copy it by tesla coil discharge. very shock.

Does anyone know what happens when discharging a high voltage capacitor to a high density spiral coil? First, let's put into the core a magnet along the coil's axis. Most of the electrical power becomes accelerating motion as long as the discharge take places. Now let's rotate the coil so the axis is straight up the zenith.The motion becomes dynamic energy.This is collectable with no time limitation similar to hydroelectricity!