Eli5: can we use lightning for electricity? If not, why?
In: Physics
Not really, no. While a lightning bold carries a large amount of energy, even with a lighting rod, it won’t strike a given spot regularly enough to make it a cost effective source of power. We’d have to have a system designed to collect power in occasional, sudden, and enormous bursts. A power grid needs to be able to adjust itself to both power supply and power demand. Adding lightning into the mix just makes the matter more complicated.
To give some idea, the Empire State Building is hit by lightning about 25 times a year. At 5 gigajoules per strike this works out to about 35 megawatt hours. Roughly what would be consumed by three average American households in a year. This is assuming we can collect the power with perfect efficiency, which is impossible.
So you’re really not getting a lot of return for the amount of effort you’re putting into it.
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