A few years ago, after reading an article in the Scientific American on lightning, I proposed a rather crazy idea that lightning could be fished for by sportsmen with kites who would be rewarded by payments from power companies for the energy they could contribute to the power grid. It would be, to say the least, an extreme sport.

See link for some of the issues:

http://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/questions/lightning3.html

I've always wondered about this too. I realise that harnessing that amount of power in the amount of time that it is released is difficult using conventional methods. However, I wonder if it could be directed into a huge body of water and used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Recombining these would release a huge amount of energy and it could be done in a controlled process. It's just a question of whether it is possible/feasbily to split water into H and O and be able to catch it -- my chemistry knowledge is limited but I do recall doing this with battery power in one class.

Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen gas is not only possible, the technology has existed for a hundred years or so. 2H2O -> H2 + O2. Electrolysis is the only practical way to do this, so theoretically lightning could be used to produce hydrogen gas for fuel cells. The only problem I see with this process is how to devise a system that would not only be efficient in gathering and harnessing lightning, but be shielded from simply bursting when 2 moles of liquid water suddenly become 2 moles of high-temperature gas. Lightning seems almost too random and powerful to provide that safety net. I can almost guarentee within the first few times it is used that it would cause a major explosion of the electrolysis apparatus.

This is an intriguing idea, especially as elaborated by Reddie and Magic. Most experts would say that the energy density is too high to be stored, but Reddie's idea of dumping it into electrolysis of water might work. And Magic's expectation of explosions is probably correct.

My suggestion: Use the explosions and other dramatic aspects for a reality TV program. The Green Party, the Sierra Club, or some other organization pushing alternative energy could offer a prize of one million dollars to the first organization to collect a specified amount of hydrogen in this way. The Discovery Channel would film the explosions.

Hard to believe? Surely not as hard as expecting people to give up their big cars.

Where's the Green Party going to get the million dollars? They aren't capitalists. The only way they know how to make money is to loot it from others lol.

I have been working on this one for quite some timeI have a six foot modela van de graff generator simulates a thundercloud

A uv or ir laser creates a photoionized path from the "cloud" to groundvia a High voltage conductor through a large inductorthe power from the electricity is tranformed to a magnetic field by way of the inductor [yes you need to sheild this field] this creates a braking effect .

Then electrolyze the water into hydrogen and oxygen. for storage

yes this is a crude prototypebut it works

I am trying to build a big versionand "ask real nicely"the guy who invented the laser lighning rodto use his device to add to my own for commercial purposes

what I am unsure of is, what would happen in the rare instances of"megalighnting" 150-300+ gigawatt positive strikes that happen from time to time.

If there is anybody who wants to help this one along please feel free contact me.that's if the oil barrons don't try to shoot this down.

clarence.livingstone@comcast.net

I've been thinking about this. If you used a heavy enough conductor, couldn't you step-down the voltage to something an array of electrolytic capacitors could handle?

Then you could feed power from the array into the electrical grid on an as-needed basis.

Although my electricity knowledge only goes so far, I thought of this 5+ years ago while doing a science project. I'm a sophmore in high school right now and came upon this forum. I have a Van de Graaff (quite small compared to yours) and was wondering if there was a way to convert the electrostatic energy into direct current. I know for sure there are motors out there that can use electrostatic energy directed at them and convert it into kinetic energy, which could be converted back into electricity using an alternator. There must be a more efficient method of doing this sort of thing.

Richard Reavis

Here's another possibility; it's not amazingly efficient, but it works like most generators do- on heat. Find a large quantity of a highly electrically resistive element (probably a metal, but maybe some other material would work) and get the lightning to strike it. Then, use the large amounts of heat created to create steam to power a generator. My immediate worries with this: There aren't many metals that will be able to put up with the heat a lightning strike could generate. Energy of a lightning strike is ~1e9 Joules for 10ms; some of that is obviously lost in light, etc. so lets say we get 2% of that, or 2e7 J for electricity to use. If we assume zero conversion loss from electricity to heat (not terribly precise, but we're really dealing with orders of magnitude, so bear with me or correct me), we use Q=mc(T2-T1), using (lets say) 20kg of iron (with specific heat c = 449 J/kg K). According to my back of the envelope calcs (assuming ambient temp is around 300K), that gives us a temperature in the metal of around 2080K, or 1800 C (pretty hot). Now, a good steam engine is (if memory serves) 20-30% efficient, and with water's c = 4186 J/Kg K we can take that 2e7 Joules and boil (i.e. T2-T1 =73 K) roughly 65 kg (or L) of water, and get (I guess...someone should check me on this) 4e6 Joules, or 1.1 KWh. Sadly, that is really insubstantial (that won't even run a home for a day), so please check my math, or correct some of the numbers I used. Thoughts?

To do this you need a high tower, a copper cable connected to the ground and top of the tower, a couple of super-capacitors parallell to the cable and a switch to bring the capacitors online when it detects a precharge.

Then you need an inverter and an advanced transformer to feed the juice to the grid before the SCs' self-discharge.

Yep, I would admit as well I have absolutely no idea of electricity whatsoever, however the thought of electrity generation from a natural source is something we strive towards. I am currently carrying out volunteering work in the poorest part of nicaragua (one of the poorest countries in the western world). Ironically, the NFP company I am helping is trying to generate electricity from wind turbines, to charge batteries, which provide electricity for parts of the country that do not have a single light in their wooden shack!!! However they do have an abundance of lightning storms, possibly 2/3 a day in the area during the rainy season (wich is coupled with gallons and gallons of water).

As said from the start I have absolutely no idea of technology required for the generation of electrity, however this place has definately the natural resources required - just requires the expertise and skills. In a place which could easily benefit, be sure of using this as a testing area for any budding entrepreneurs. Keep with the great suggestions this is a very intriguing topic!! Sorry i cant be any help on the suggestion front!!

Capturing lighning isn't the problem, storing it as energy is. You would need a really huge bank of capacitors for storage, and a very large inverter to feed the power into the national power grid.

Beaugrand is quite correct when he says that a large condensing medium is necessary to contain the huge current delivered by any lightning stroke. In Nature this condensing capacity is supplied by the Earth itself.(As an aside I think the earth suffers approximately 8000 strikes per day,it really does have a mega capacity for electrons delivered as a/c electricity.(Lightning starts its life cycle from a great big heap of Static electricity =contained and non-moving electric sub-atomic charge),this heap has the capacity or potential to fall down onto something else with a great big wallop untill it has disapated, or discharged its stored energy and basically gone flat,and when it does go flat, it reverts back to static electricity again. In this state it is also ready to be pushed into motion again whence it will become a/c current again,ad-infinatum,etc etc.

Potential may be thought of as something from up high, decending to a ground level,where it stops! But if that ground level drops lower (Imagine a 10 story car park building with a heap of blocks on the top floor,then imagine the bottom floor collapsing,followed after a period of time by another floor, then another etc) then this potential(the blocks) that it was supporting will follow it down too,each fall giving it a new lease of life, untill equallibrium is once more reached,i.e.it becomes static once more. THe only other way that static electricity can regain a higher potential again is by pushing or pulling (forcing) it to move, or by lifting it up higer so that it can fall down again,and this has to be done by another seperate energy source that also has to have a higher potential than that of the lower potentialed static electricity.

I dont imagine that a condenser as big as the earth would be needed to contain one lightning bolt, but it would have to have the capacity of condensing or accumulating quite a large amount of electrons in one or more spaces. I think from memory that the current is equivalent to about 80,000,000. volts! with similar ampereage for each average stroke, so if you would like to divide this into 12 volt storage batteries,Then I guess that you might need quite a few?

regards Criticol 25/9/05.

Lightning provides brief, extremely powerful electricity. It can arc for great distances and would be impractical if not impossible to store, as it would melt components in the grid.

If you wanted to do it, however, a giant capacitor bank and a rocket with a metal ribbon would give you triggered, stored lightning. Good luck.

The storage is the problem.Also lightning voltage is of about 10MV & thousandsm of ampere there is no materials found in earth to bear this high voltage, it will burn out.

Ok, how about this idea? Have a field of windmills, but place them in the water. After all, 2/3 of our planet is covered by water. These would not be ordinary windmills, they would be coated in solar panels, both the blades and the main body of the windmill. Then atop each windmill would be a pole to attract lightning. Since the windmill is positioned in a body of water, the energy from the lightning could be used for electrolysis. Each station could sit atop a large underwater battery used to store the electricity produced. Therefore, you would have a station that derives energy from THREE renewable sources. What do you think?

Lightning is the release or loss of electrons from clouds. Apparently the top of lightning clouds is positive and the bottom is negative. The earth is also positive. These clouds can be releived of their electrons and stored in earth made capacitors on a controlled basis. A tower might provide the ideal path for clouds to pass thru to be farms.

Hm the first person who tried to store lightning.Used a botle of glass and put a metal foil on the inside.And a metal pin on top trough halfway in the botle.Ofcourse it didn't catch all of these extreme powerfull energy.But sadly enough to kill the man when he touched the bottle.

I just wonder what if that bottle had the size of an appartment, or bigger.It would be apble to store more energy while the design can be simple and wil not likely to burnout on a first strike, as tiny electronics often do.

Still then you need a way to tap small portions of energy of this.And some skilled people have to look at this as this is about deadly electric powers. Not something to try for you and me at home..

I should add that there's several inconsistencies with my description above.

Lightening is extremely high voltage, so it will simply bypass the supercapasitors by arcing. There's more, but I leave it as homework.

You are all over-looking the real problem. Lightning produces millions of watts of electricity. There is no known conductor that could handle that kind of power without vaporizing. You would have to invent something that could survive multiple strikes intact to make this idea feasible.

I think part of the problem is that when we think about capturing lighting, we are think about capturing the energy of the entire bolt. But what if there was a way to capture only part of the energy?

Well there is - and it's done all the time - as RF. Ever tune to the low dial of an AM radio during a storm? You "hear" the lighting as it cuts through the air and broadcasts over a large area. The closer you are to the lightning, the louder the crackles and pops.

Now, given that we can power devices with RF (see RFID and Induction Loops for the hearing impaired), and given that we know how to attract lighting, I see no reason why we would not be able to build a lighting rod and put a large induction loop near-by, but not directly connected, that powers some sort of super capacitor/battery charging circuit.

-CF

I've been thinking about this for years and I think CaptMagic and Sevans are on the right track, by using the lightning to electrolyze the water into hydrogen and oxygen. But forget about trying to keep it from exploding and capture the gases... I say plan on the explosion happening and use it in a giant piston or array of pistons. As mentioned in other posts above, capturing the lightning in it's electrical form is impossible with today’s technology, but converting it into kinetic energy (i.e. exploding gases moving a piston) and then harnessing the kinetic energy seems like a much more feasible feat. You can regulate the kinetic energy output by adjusting the mass of the piston and the amount of water until you come to a manageable ratio. With an array of these "lightning pistons" you could send one bolt of lightning through several of them at a time and possibly repeatedly. It would work on the same principle as a giant car engine except rather than spinning an axle it would spin turbines, and instead of burning gasoline it would burn water. We've got enough water to go around and the exhaust would be water vapor. Perfectly clean and abundant energy for everyone... you can thank me later (unless I get whacked by "Big Oil" first).-Johnny Blista

…actually it was Steven Reddie and CaptainMagic I meant to agree with in my above post. Sorry Sevans, I don’t know that too many people would like to watch a Sierra Club reality show, though explosions would surely help!

Years ago I was working on my TV antenna on the roof of my one story home. A storm was approaching and I received a mild shock. My point is, instead of going for the big unmanageable unpredictive bolts of lightning, why not gather the low level always present charge that exists in a storm front. Much like a wind generator.

What if you allowed the lightning to strike a large body of water. This would act as an insulator for your storage devices, reducing the chances of damaging your system.

I work on commercial aircraft and they use six inch long static discharger on the trailing edge of the wing and flight controls. This discharger is made of a carbon material that meters 6 to 200 megohms(high resistance). What if you tried getting some of the lightning energy but not all of it. Experiment with different materials like carbon. A cloud builds up a large differential of electricity. We just need to tap into it. Think of the cloud as a battery.

http://a52.g.akamaitech.net/f/52/827/1d/www.space.com/images/hf_light_rocket_030130_01.jpg

We do not have the ability to store that amount of energy that quickly.

Beaugrand is quite correct when he says that a large condensing medium is necessary to contain the huge current delivered by any lightning stroke. In Nature this condensing capacity is supplied by the Earth itselfcriticol, says a smaller earth may do the same for 1 lightningwhat if we invert the process and isolate a smaller piece (part) of earthsay like a globe to be isolated from the rest big enough to mantain this potential of electical in balance not so dense a very big Van de Graaffand from there retake in smaller portions the electricity as with a normalVan de Graaff would it do the trick?

schneidera is nice, but what if we stop the idea for a sec and see the great potencial gravity has, see if we anchor a type of "windmill" (so that no matter if it the reels rotates to the right of to the left its center rotates always to the same direccion say to the right,thats easy dont be concern with that) water currents, with its great power, could generate electicity the way we do in a electrical plat, but instead of having a 1 o 3 big generators you we can have N, it does not have be on deep water, no need for that. It will be taking energy from the tides

For the windmill and storage ideas - Great! See the photo this month on BBC internet site labelled Scroby Sands Great Yarmouth Norfolk England showing multiple lightning strikes at a windmill farm on water. For patents pertinent to your lightning thoughts (storage, converting coal) and NASA's Fact sheet suggesting there isn't so much power afterall see.http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6012330-description.htmlhttp://www.freepatentsonline.com/5417282.htmlhttp://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/about/information/science_faq.html#1

Dumb question...when lightning strikes the ground, where does all of that energy go. Also since lightning has been striking the ground for thousands of years wouldn't the earth be like a huge battery? Do a search on earth battery.

These are all good ideas. however I have a simpler one. Theoretically lightning is generated by ice movement in a cloud. Why not simply use the wind from the storm to generate a given amount of electricity. then create a wind tunnel with an orifice. The expansion would create a temperature differential which could freeze the water. then the ice could be tmbled by wind turbulence. this would generate a controlable amount of energy. the energy could then be fed into tubes immersed in the water. The electrolysis would then form hydrogen. Usually around the negative electrode. then the h2 and 02 would be separated. which would greatly decrease the chance of explosion

Geof: Your calculations are intriguing. I did not follow your math. so cannot really check your math. However here lately I have had a little expierence with electricity and heat transfer. I take infrared photos. My observationsare as follows.1. About 1/3rd of the available energy is transformed to a tmeperature rise(9 joules results in about 3 degrees) This is with a copper conductor usually 10 or 12 AWG. although the same seems to hold true for greater sizes.2. time seems to be of particular significance. AS the temperature pattern makes a definite pattern. This pattern has a linear decay rate.3. Further the temperature change seems to be related to the wattage applied and the time frame in which it is applied. For example at 10 amps of current flow less than 6 inches of a #12 AWG wire will have a temperature increase.By increasing this current to 50 Amps the length of wire is increased to about 3 feet.4. It seems a point of stability is reached depending on the mass, the time the energy is applied and the magnitude of the energy.5. In conclusion even with the magnitude of a lighting strike it is doubtful that 20 Kg of Iron would expierence a temperature rise of more than a few hundred degrees C. If you doubt this take some observations of a lightning rod in a thunderstorm.6. Copper melts at about 1080 degrees C. 1800 degrees C would be pretty near the melting point of Iron. Also 20 Kg (about 30 pounds?) is pretty near the mass of a standard lightning rod system

I may be wrong but I don't believe we have to deal with extremely dangerous and ultri-high voltage lightning bolts at all. What we really want to exploit is the potential charge difference between the clouds and the ground. Lightning is a sudden, violent adjustment to this charge, but with a permanent wire connecting the ground to the sky (with something like the old ww2 blimps around London), we could channel the electricity g r a d u a l l y - with an available path to the ground, there won't need to be sporadic lightning discharges; at least not near the blimp farms.

I'm building just such an experiment right now, and I'll report back after next thunderstorm season.

I believe U.S. Patent # 5367245, issued Nov. 22, 1994 and held by Goren Mims of Miami, Florida entitled "Assembly for the induction of lightning into a superconducting magnetic energy storage system" may hold the answers to alot of the questions posted here. Go to this link and enter the Patent number.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm

There was an article in Popular Science some years back, also, showing a HUGE setup spread across a valley between two 'mountains' that would also collect the energy frm lightning but I cannot seem to find it in my files. I guess it's time to reorganize them (again).

Have a great day and keep experimenting (safely)!

Lightning has far too much power to be effectively used for electricity. The energy is simply released too fast in lightning. Theoretically if you used a large enough capacitor and reduced resistance down to 0 (superconductors) then it would be possible. Since one lightning blast contains enough power to run a small city for one year...we are talking about an extraordinary amount of power and thus the capacitor must be enormous.

I have thought about this "lightning for electrolysis" idea for a few years now, as some of the rest of you have. I even wrote the idea in to GE to see what they thought (got no response -- perhaps because I have absolutely no qualifications to be advising anyone on electricity). So today I decided to actually search the idea and found this thread... I agree with those that say split the water molecules. There's no sense trying to harness the energy, just channel it and use it while it's there.

So, to expound on the previous ideas: what if you set up giant tanks of salt water (think Sea World size) covered in a large dome. These would be annexed onto existing coal burning power plants. Dozens of lightning rods would be set up around the facility until a substantial amount of lightning strikes could be maintained. Each lightning rod would flow to the giant water tank via 1" copper wire or whatever. From there it would flow to dozens of electrodes located in the salt water (why dozens? think "surface area"). The energy would arc from electrode to electrode and whatnot, and in doing so, split the water molecules (H2O) into H2 and O2. From there it is a matter of using existing technology to separate the hydrogen and oxygen, and then use the hydrogen in the coal plant, which would be converted to a hydrogen burning plant. Water vapor exhaust is sent back into the dome.

Feasibility problems/questions: 1. Since there are different types of electrical currents, is lightning the type that can perform electrolysis?2. What would be a substantial amount of lightning strikes and can it be attained?

I like that, what about slowing down the release of energy, or getting it slower? To get the energy slower maybe a remote controll blimp attached to a cable to fly to the top of the clouds befor the charge get big enough to jump to the ground. Or use lighting to heat up or melt something, then use the heat to gererate power. Maybe use induction coils around the main cable feeding more induction coils?