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Andrew Pronto

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Is there a reason the lightning bolts cannot be used to generate electricity? Could we use rods connected to battery cells?

Might be a silly question......

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    Roy Bourque 20+

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    May 17 2012: A lightning bolt is 150-250 million volts. There is a very short burst of current. Both the voltage and current produce problems. We don't have anything that could withstand that voltage, and the current creates extreme heating. The other problem is that lightning is very sporadic. You can't predict where it will strike, and storms don't stay in one place. If you could produce a way to absorb the lightning bolt, it would have to follow the storm, which means it needs to be portable, or many stations spread out over large distances.

    Lightning forms when rapid air currents cause moist air to rise, stripping the electrons from the molecules by friction. The moisture condenses and then falls to the earth as positive charged raindrops. The free electrons build up in the clouds until they overcome the air resistance, causing them to spark as a lightning bolt. The electrons then return to the ground where they neutralize the charge buildup.

    Nikola Tesla has the closest idea that could be incorporated, but the Tesla coil operates on AC and lightning is DC.

    Good luck in your search.
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    Peter Law 30+

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    May 16 2012: I don't think we have anything that could absorb the shock. We are used to handling a few thousand volts over long periods. It takes 10,000 volts to make a spark jump a centimetre ; you do the math. No battery system could cope.
    Another option would be to use the power to crack water into hydrogen & oxygen, but again, no equipment could stand that sort of shock.
    How about balloons, or very high towers, bleeding the voltage away from the clouds before it reached unmanageable heights,......well maybe sometime in the future.
    There is lightning that goes upward, maybe some mileage there.
    It's all weather dependant, which is perhaps the main reason it hasn't been tried.

    :-)
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