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nomercy400 6 hours ago

How many batteries in parallel would you need to capture the power of a lightning strike?

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onraglanroad 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

As mentioned, you can't do it with batteries.

To capture the 1.21 GW from a lightening strike requires a flux capacitor.

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bluGill 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

As far as I know, we have yet to figure out how to capture power from a lightning strike. There is a lot of energy there, but it's static electricity which is completely different from what any grid runs on.

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HPsquared 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You'd probably use some kind of capacitor

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Maxion 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

To capture it? Quite a few I'd imagine. The energy you could collect though from one hit is quite low.

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myrmidon 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's around 1MWh within a fraction of a second.

That means very high peak power, making your whole capture infrastructure extremely expensive, but even capturing 100% of an average lightning bolt is worth <$100 in electricity.

Which is why nobody even attempts this.

	▲	neutronicus 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		An actual generation scheme would probably do something with the potential difference prior to dielectric breakdown actually occurring, at any rate.

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chii 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

yea, i think the low efficiency (plus how to predict where lightning would hit!). Might as well just put up a wind turbine, since wind is much more predictable, not to mention easier to harvest.