Lightning appears to be this limitless supply of energy, so why isn’t this being considered as a valid source of our future energy needs. Surely we could have some sort of lightning rod connected to a huge array of batteries to store all of this electricity. I’m sure there is a simple explanation, but I’m interested to hear what it is.
In: 1090
So instead of electricity, let’s talk water.
Let’s say you want to use a water barrel, like one of the old timey oak and steel ring numbers, to store some water that you’ll use over the next few days.
You can fill it with a bucket faster than you use it, so it’s an effective reservoir to store excess capacity. A light rain will fill it up over a few hours.
But now the high rise skyscraper next door demolishes it’s Olympic swimming pool and all that water comes crashing down right on your storm barrel.
The barrel fills almost instantaneously, but there’s a 1000x more water than it could ever hold. The barrel explodes from the force. Your house gets damaged, so does your yard. Everything’s broken.
That’s what it’s like to harness lighting. We don’t have any kind of infrastructure to handle holding that much power *that fast*, and trying to do so just ends up blowing everything connected to it up instead.
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