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
It would seem to me one way to approach this is to somehow extract the power from the clouds BEFORE they have stored enough energy to generate the lightning.
It would seem to me one way to approach this is to somehow extract the power from the clouds BEFORE they have stored enough energy to generate the lightning.
Same reason we don’t harvest energy from large explosions to cook our food. It’s too much too quickly.
Unfortunately, we never know when or where lightning is going to strike. I’m sorry future boy, but it looks like you’re stuck here.
Same reason we don’t harvest energy from large explosions to cook our food. It’s too much too quickly.
Unfortunately, we never know when or where lightning is going to strike. I’m sorry future boy, but it looks like you’re stuck here.
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.
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.
ELI5:
Think of a small cup, being filled by a dripping faucet. The water is electrical current. that slow drip that’s filling the small cup? that’s your normal energy capture. It’s planned, it’s steady. It works.
Now, instead of a dripping faucet, you’re going to use a fire hose on full blast. You don’t know when or where or how long the fire hose will be turned on. That’s lightning.
You carefully place the cup on a counter, and wait. After a few months, the fire hose comes on! The problem is that the fire hose has so much pressure flowing through it, that fire hose is snaking violently around the room, spraying high pressure water all over the walls, ceiling, and carpet. It blows the paintings off the wall. It blows out the windows. It finally manages to get some water into the cup…before blowing the poor cup all the way across the house and smashing it against the wall.
You race to get another cup. Before you can grab another cup, the hose shuts off. Maybe it will come back on in a day, month, year, decade. It’s not predictable.
IOW, lighting is completely unpredictable, and has too much energy. It’s also coming in way too fast to effectively control it, much less collect it.
That’s like saying why can’t we explode a hydrogen bomb and load it into our power grid. Huge amounts of energy produced over fractions of a second are not useable.
Latest Answers