This is Zeus, the Greek god of Thunder. Besides being the king of the gods,
he was perhaps best known for handling LIGHTNING and manipulating it to his will.
Could we, the technologically savvy race of humans, follow in those footsteps?
Can we harness this awesome force of nature to power our homes and industries?
Although exactly why and how lightning occurs is a little contentious, it is generally agreed that
lightning happens between the downdrafts and updrafts of thunderstorms. Lighter particles
move upwards to the top of the cloud and become positively charged, while bulkier ones descend
towards the bottom of the cloud and become negatively charged. When this differential
build-up of charge grows large enough, lightning is released between these regions. In reality,
most of the lightning takes place within the cloud, but some bolts find their way
out and descend to the ground, which can cause fires, injuries, and general mayhem.
Lightning is not only bright, but also VERY HOT. The temperature of lightning is a whopping 27,000
degrees Celsius. To put things in perspective, that temperature is nearly 5 times hotter than
the surface of the Sun! When lightning strikes, it often burns the surrounding
air due to its extreme temperatures. Lightning can also carry over a billion joules of energy.
As electrical power is equal to energy per unit time, the power that it exudes
is also humongous. A high amount of energy is deposited in just a fraction of a second.
Although the energy of a lightning strike varies, assuming it carries 1 billion joules of energy,
that would mean it delivers around 300 kWh of power. According to the United States Energy
Information and Administration (EIA), the average annual power consumption of a typical US household
is 11,000 kWh. This translates into roughly 30 kWh of consumption on a daily basis.
Thus, a powerful lightning bolt could power around 10 homes in the US for a whole day.
Despite being a carrier of ginormous amounts of energy, extracting energy from a thunderbolt
isn’t particularly easy. There are quite a few constraints associated with harnessing juice
from a streaking lightning bolt. For simplicity’s sake, we earlier assumed
that a lightning bolt carries over a billion joules of energy, but not all flashes of lightning
are created equal. In some lightning strikes, the power can be hazardously higher than the forecast,
while in others, it may be ludicrously low. Then, there is also the fact that lightning
strikes are totally sporadic. Some areas receive a much higher concentration of lightning strikes,
while others are nearly immune to such weather patterns.
Furthermore, you can never have advanced knowledge of where they will strike or with what intensity.
This makes it very challenging to capture and conserve those instantaneous bolts of energy.
Despite millions of lightning strikes occurring every year, the geographical
distribution of these strikes is very skewed. Most lightning strikes occur in the tropics and
in remote mountainous regions. Designing and setting up state-of-the-art energy storage and
conversion systems in such locations is even more challenging from an economic standpoint.
Finally, let’s talk about the technological constraint. Absorbing the incident lightning
strikes and then converting them into electrical energy to easily power our homes and industries
would be an arduous engineering task. This is because lightning deposits a whole lot of
energy ALL AT ONCE. Most of our electronic devices and components, such as capacitors,
transistors, batteries, ICs, and flywheels, aren’t designed to withstand such abrupt surges in power.
Thus, we would need to completely revamp our electrical machinery and replace it with
complex power systems that could withstand powerful lightning strikes and efficiently
extract usable “juice” from it. For example, to attract and capture lightning, tall metallic
iron rods extending high above the ground would be required. This would be risky and definitely
represent a safety hazard. Remember, lightning kills thousands of people every year. We cannot
risk more lives to extract power from lightning, unless we are fully convinced about its safety.
Additionally, we would need to design rapid-charge batteries that could charge themselves in tandem
with the lightning strike. All of these challenges associated with developing lightning harvesting
systems have restricted us from harnessing a meaningful amount of energy from lightning.
Despite these hurdles, people have tried in the past and are still testing out mechanisms to
harvest energy from lightning. In the mid-2000s, a researcher called Steve LeRoy supposedly powered
a bulb for a few minutes with artificially generated lightning. A company called Alternate
Energy Holdings bought the design from LeRoy and embarked on a journey to create lightning farms.
They had plans to harvest energy from lightning through these lightning farms in Houston,
where lightning strikes are frequent. However, this venture never got off the ground,
and the company left the lightning farm business after their unsuccessful efforts.
In late 2000, a group of French scientists tried to control lightning with lasers.
They attempted to incite electrical activity and attract lightning using lasers in the New Mexican
desert, which is known for a high incidence of lightning. However, when they fired lasers,
there was a noticeable increase in electrical activity in the clouds, but unfortunately,
lightning didn’t happen where they expected. Ryan Davis, a former marine and an independent
researcher, has recently embarked on a mission called Project First Light. He is working on a
revolutionary network with rapid charging batteries that could harness a lightning
bolt’s power. He claims that rare materials from ASTEROIDS are being used in the construction of
his lightning energy harvesting project. How much this project achieves remains to be seen.
Without an iota of doubt, we can say that lightning is a TREMENDOUS source of energy.
Unfortunately, when it comes to the practicality of harvesting energy from lightning,
things get tricky. Our quest for an advanced, safe, and efficient power system that can deal
with the volatility of lightning strikes and convert them into a nice usable form of energy
is ongoing. Only time will tell if we can really step into the shoes of Zeus
and extract usable volts from a lightning bolt!