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
We’ve tried, the power levels involved are just crazy high so the tend to blow the systems out
A single good sized lightning bolt has an energy of 5 GigaJoules (1,389 kWh) but because its transferred over about 10 microseconds the power level is 500 Terawatts
A power plant like Hoover dam can provide 5 Gigajoules over about 40 minutes. The lightning strike is taking those 40 minutes of production and cramming them into 10 millionths of a second and hoping you won’t just vaporize portions of the grid
You can’t use batteries for something like this, they charge about a million times too slow. You end up needing ludicrously large capacitor banks about 10x bigger than the National Ignition Facility uses to fire its lasers to make fusion, and even then you need there to be a thunderstorm overhead otherwise its just spending its time sitting there wasting money
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