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
A few problems.
– Lightning is unpredictable. We never know when a storm is going to form and if that storm will generate lightning. We can’t _reliabily_ use it for power.
– Capturing lightning is hard. You need to have a lightning rod attached to a capacitor bank, so you can only capture the bolt if it strikes in _exactly_ the right spot.
– We can’t just put the power into the grid directly – a massive influx like that would burn out the grid. We’d need to store it and deliver it over time, which leads to the next problem.
– Storing lightning is even harder. There is a massive amount of power in a lightning bolt, and we simply don’t have batteries that can store that much power that quickly.
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