Exploring the possibilities of storing electricity from lightning

[couperusfred]

TL;DR

I'm looking for some help on if it is possible to store electrical currents from lightning bolt see I'm not very good at science but please bear with me as I am open to learning to.

Hello, I came up with an idea which may not be original, but I find that it's not spoken about enough, and that is turning lightning into electricity or storing the electrical charge from lightning and storing it in a battery. See, one problem is I'm not good at science, but I'm open to learning, of course, but even though I know that this is very inefficient, this is one of those things where the journey may be more valuable than the end result, like, for example, a better understanding of weather, technological advancements in battery technology and in the technology in conductors and just the overall understanding of electricity. I don't really know; those are just my thoughts, though.

this was in my introduction to the site and I would like to say that I am going to need help just realising how crazy or not crazy the idea sounds but again I'm very open to learning and exploring ideas and pushing limits

 

[renormalize]

TL;DR: I'm looking for some help on if it is possible to store electrical currents from lightning bolt see I'm not very good at science but please bear with me as I am open to learning to.

Based on a brief search, your idea doesn't appear to be very promising.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvesting_lightning_energy:
According to Martin A. Uman, co-director of the Lightning Research Laboratory at the University of Florida and a leading authority on lightning, "a single lightning strike, while fast and bright, contains very little energy by the time it gets down to earth, and dozens of lightning towers like those used in the system tested by AEHI would be needed to operate five 100-watt light bulbs for the course of a year". When interviewed by The New York Times, he stated that "the energy in a thunderstorm is comparable to that of an atomic bomb, but trying to harvest the energy of lightning from the ground is hopeless".
Here's some further reading on energy from lightning:
https://www.edn.com/lightning-as-an-energy-harvesting-source/

 

[couperusfred]

I'm not really sure though it may just be that there hasn't been enough research into it and technology is advancing rapidly so I wouldn't be suprised if it becomes a subject once again at some point in the future.

 

[renormalize]

I'm not really sure though it may just be that there hasn't been enough research into it and technology is advancing rapidly so I wouldn't be suprised if it becomes a subject once again at some point in the future.

But note that the world still lacks practical power from hydrogen-fusion, even though it's been "in research" for over 75 years. So I would advise to you read and understand the references I posted, as well as any others you can find on the subject, in order to realistically calibrate your expectations for practical power from lightning.

 

[phyzguy]

One way to look at it is that the energy in a lightning bolt is about 1GJoule or 1,000,000 1,000,000,000 Joules. This is equal to about 275 kWh, and so is worth about $50 if you could harvest it all (very unlikely). How much do you think it would cost to build a vehicle that would drive around looking for storms in order to harvest $50 worth of electricity? How much gas would it take to get to the storm? How would you then deliver your $50 worth of electricity to customers, and how much would that distribution system cost?

 

[berkeman]

I'm not really sure though it may just be that there hasn't been enough research into it and technology is advancing rapidly so I wouldn't be suprised if it becomes a subject once again at some point in the future.

Maybe, but as illustrated by the reply by @phyzguy above, in order to be practical, there would need to be a way to harvest the energy of many strikes or the potential between a large area of clouds and the ground. That could happen in the future maybe in places where there are frequent thunderstorms, and might look something like the newer large area solar energy farms.

I encourage you to keep brainstorming ideas and keep researching them by reading good technical sources (add Google Scholar to your Google searches). I also encourage you to keep pursuing science education in school, since that only increases your ability to recognize things that are not practical versus things that may be practical with some invention...

 

[Baluncore]

The voltage is greater than the breakdown voltage of the atmosphere, so you will need better insulators than air.

If you use a transformer to lower the voltage, while increasing the current, the transformer inductance will delay the flow of current, so the lightning will destroy the transformer insulation, and simply bypass it to ground.

 

[haruspex]

One way to look at it is that the energy in a lightning bolt is about 1GJoule or 1,000,000 Joules.

No, that's a Megajoule. A Gigajoule has nine zeroes. But the 275kWh is correct (well, 278).

This is equal to about 275 kWh, and so is worth about $50 if you could harvest it all (very unlikely). How much do you think it would cost to build a vehicle that would drive around looking for storms in order to harvest $50 worth of electricity? How much gas would it take to get to the storm? How would you then deliver your $50 worth of electricity to customers, and how much would that distribution system cost?

 

[phyzguy]

Thanks. Corrected.

 

[couperusfred]

One way to look at it is that the energy in a lightning bolt is about 1GJoule or 1,000,000 1,000,000,000 Joules. This is equal to about 275 kWh, and so is worth about $50 if you could harvest it all (very unlikely). How much do you think it would cost to build a vehicle that would drive around looking for storms in order to harvest $50 worth of electricity? How much gas would it take to get to the storm? How would you then deliver your $50 worth of electricity to customers, and how much would that distribution system cost?

i'll look more into it as i've been recommended again at the moment its just an idea i've come up with and i have looked at the practical limitations but i believe that all ideas have to start as an idea and then you build on that with research and how it could practically be used also i just checked and found a Q and A from the university of Illinois and found out specifically that the amount of energy produced by a lightning strike can vary immensely from 1 billion joules to 10 billion joules which is crazy additionally imagine theoretically you would be able to "place a lightning catcher" in the most highly lightning populated area in the world and that is around 1.6 million flashes of lightning annually now we estimate how many joules that would be if every lightning strike was 1,000,000,000 thats then 1,600,000,000,000 joules or around 444,444 kWh again this is just base line research im doing here will probably look at it on a deeper level when i'm not busy.

 

[A.T.]

I'm not really sure though it may just be that there hasn't been enough research into it and technology is advancing rapidly so I wouldn't be suprised if it becomes a subject once again at some point in the future.

We are already harvesting plenty of energy from the atmosphere via wind turbines, which is a much simpler and more reliable than via lightning flashes. It's very unlikely that in the future you have less wind but more lightning.

 

[couperusfred]

We are already harvesting plenty of energy from the atmosphere via wind turbines, which is a much simpler and more reliable than via lightning flashes. It's very unlikely that in the future you have less wind but more lightning.

less wind no but weather is ever changing as it always is but its very unpredictable to see what the weather patterns will be but that also means that catching lightning would be unpredictable and actually not reliable but it may be reliable in the future once the technology has caught up with the idea additionally the energy from lightning strike are like the energy we don't end up getting from the sun so it's like a recycling but for storm or should i say for solar energy which is interesting to me its like we talk about recycling a lot so i just thought how about i explore the possibilities involved in recycling the suns energy via thunderstorms and collecting energy from lightning.

 

[couperusfred]

again as of ight now its just and idea with base level research i've seen and looked into im open to looking at multiple sources and learning and also just imagining possibilities so i'd love to see a lot of people input as a research this topic

 

[A.T.]

the energy from lightning strike are like the energy we don't end up getting from the sun

It's more like trying to capture the energy from the sound that wind sometimes makes, instead of just building a wind turbine. It's a tiny fraction of the total energy in the atmosphere, most of which can be harvested in much simpler ways.

 

[phyzguy]

@couperusfred, please learn to use capitalization and punctuation in your writing. Your stream-of-consciousness posts are very hard to read and most people will not take them seriously.