Treehugger - Latest Comments in Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Chandima Gomes — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:23:36 -0000

Just an addition if you collect lightning energy in the whole world at 100% efficiency one can light up a 60 W bulb per square kilometer

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Chandima Gomes — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 21:19:11 -0000

This company is definitely going to fool a politician for some political gain. One can theoretically prove that even if you collect lightning energy with 100% efficiency what you can do is to simply illuminate a 60 W bulb for one year

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Killbot — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 05:28:25 -0000

Best source of renewable energy around. Besides capture, I guess storage and transmittance would be the issues. My only concern would be this, the lightning goes to a particular place on the ground for a reason (and you can prescribe whatever physical scientific reason you want here) but the short answer is it goes there because it was needed there, otherwise why would it strike there. So if by taking from whatever needed it, what would the consequences be? For instance, how much could be harvested before an effect on ground nitrogen levels were seen?

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Tom Hicks — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:54:04 -0000

I think this stuff will remain science fiction for some years to come. The immediate future in my opinion lies with making solar panels cheaper to produce so that they are a viable option for every day home owners.

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Cameron — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:15:03 -0000

Other people may be skeptical about this matter, but i've also been looking into this for about a year. I made a miniture version (a small prototype) using my home made stadic genorator and very small energy converture to make it a small scale replica. Although I got it to work it I only got half the energy from what i started out with. After my 6th attempt my prototype caught fire and burned.So for what i think that technology will come in the future but not now.

This all happened last year...

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Ted Stevens — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 09:51:10 -0000

...from a Boston article.

A typical lightning bolt carries energy of a few hundred million joules. A joule is the energy that corresponds to one watt of power for one second. For example, a 100-watt bulb uses 100 joules of energy every second. An hour has 3,600 seconds in it, so a 100-watt bulb running for one hour uses 360,000 joules, and it uses 3.6 million joules in 10 hours. Of course one 100-watt bulb consumes very little energy compared to all the stuff you likely have in your house, and you're just one person!

You can probably start to see the problem - lightning bolts just don't carry that much energy relative to the rate at which we use it.

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Keith — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:35:11 -0000

An average thunderstorm (20min) can power the entire you U.S. for 20 minutes. -NASA

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Velma — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:33:21 -0000

What are the advantages and disadvantages of Lightning used as energy?

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Hans — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 21:49:59 -0000

By all means continue the research. Who knows, something interesting may develop. That's what science is all about.

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Khairi — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 14:46:39 -0000

dear steve leroy.. i read that you have destroyed your prototype. well, if you are not concern on sharing. i would like to know more bout this prototype that you have created and how succesful was it in tests you had created during harvesting. i am trully facinated in this topic of finding new energy source that might be the answer to most earthly problems. plus this clean energy source(lighting in particular), would benefit third world countries. for me being this facinated, is mostly because here in my school where i am studying electrical engineering, i am currently doing research on natural energy. thus i find this lightning energy source is a promising subject to present to my lecturers.

from Singapore,

Khai. Age 21.

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Steve LeRoy — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 08:10:38 -0000

Due to deliberate, vengeful negative publicity regarding my energy research I am no longer going to pursue this endeavor. I have destroyed my prototype and discarded the parts. I hope someone else who is younger and doesn't care about public opinion succeeds at lightning harvesting..the potential is really there regardless of what big news agencies are paid to publish to discredit another persons' research.

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

original inventor — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:42:58 -0000

It really makes me mad when corporations deliberately lie..and that is what is happening here. Every single R&D bit on this companies' website are my creations. I don't mind skeptics..cant tolerate a thief though. You should know that alternate energy holdings abandoned the project because they don't know how to do this..and they are nuke wannabes anyhow. This deceptive practice has GOT TO STOP!! BTW the University of Florida research team has a database that suggests an average lightning bolt has at least 1 megawatt hour of electricity. I have a solid new patent ap for tapping it, wrapping up final details. My prototype works beautifully with artificial lightning. Thanks Steve LeRoy

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Lance — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:06:29 -0000

I think it may be possible, but last i heard it they were only able to get a femtosecond lazer to make electricity to jump shorter distances in the lab, but possibly if you had a multible of lazers in circle and focused beam it may be possible. If you could do this, you may be able to cause a continuous "lightning strike", no cloud would be needed due to the high voltage differential between high altitude and low. last but not least the energy could be stored in a saltcrystal solution such as they are currently using in storing solar energy in the form of heat. Energy could then be drawn as needed.

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Todd Ridolph — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:03:06 -0000

Does anyone know of anyone currently funding projects related to the 'Harnessing of Lightning for Conversion into Usable Electricity'?

If so, I would be interested in knowing about the research.

I dont want to get into any conversations about how impossible at task it is because of "how hard it is to get struck" or "how much power comes in such a short burst".

We all know and can agree on the challenges.

Are there any programs funded that people know about?

Sincerely,

Todd B Ridolph

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

dood91 — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 10:39:27 -0000

if there is a way to store a lightning bolt and harness its awesome power then let them go 4 it its not our humility if it doesn't work

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Me — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:01:19 -0000

On average, a lighting bolt carries one million kilowatts of electrical energy.

(this is really in writing above) ^

lighting bolt? Don't you mean lightning bolt? And if you DID mean lighting bolt, it wouldn't make any since. Even though i'm not a member of this site, i would like you to know this.

p.s. I'm a 6th grader and wanted you to know.

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

vishak .v — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 11:02:24 -0000

It is actually a very good idea.I thought about it and i did got a solution how to tap the energy and store it.

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Alternative Energy — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 18:17:55 -0000

Heres one I stumbled across the the other day and had to bookmark it. Very extensive and informative

alternative energy resource. Alternative Energy

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Natural Energy — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 15:14:21 -0000

I really do hope the experiments later this year are a success. It would be quite an achievement to harness the huge amounts of natural energy lightning contains. So, were one step closer to a pipe dream, whats next? hover boards? :-D

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

NT — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 09:14:51 -0000

Capture of bolts in high lightning locatins is a done technology. Storage of the power is simple, direct it into a large water container and you get hot water or steam.

The question is merely the money in/ money out ratio

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Pete C — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:03:57 -0000

Sorry, scratch that...

Each bolt has a p.d of 300000V, and a current of 10000A, giving a power of 3,000,000,000W -> (3000 GigaWats) i.e. 1/4Gigawathour

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Pete C — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:32:18 -0000

Sorry, its one gigavolt... 1000 times more watt hours than i said before

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Pete C — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:28:41 -0000

Lightning has a potential difference of 3megavolts and lasts for 0.3 seconds, that is 250 watthours, there are 10 lighting strikes everysecond, if there were stations in the most prone places of florida and the amazon, we could at least harness enough power to recover some that we wont be getting from coal and gas if nuclear does (but it wont) go wrong

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

JiltedCitizen — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 08:54:33 -0000

If you want to capture electricity in the atmosphere then drop a tether from low earth orbit into the ionosphere. That seems more practical than capturing lightning.

Re: Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

Greg Blonder — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 08:42:57 -0000

Actually, the laser/rocket method only works IF there is a thunder cloud above the laser, AND it's about ready to strike somewhere in the IMMEDIATE vicinity. Then you can direct the lightning bolt to hit a specific target. Results vary widely- from 1 in 10 to 1 in 2 attempts, but statistics are spotty. You can't draw energy from thin air, or even from nearby thunderclouds. Not a way to build a power plant.

So many of the "green" ideas floated in the press and blogs are based on stacking a half dozen improbable or freakish demonstrations, into a seemingly robust solution. You know, in a petri dish electrical power is generated from decaying garbage, and all of a sudden we solved the solid waste and energy problem in one fell swoop. But in the "fine print", the petri dish only produced energy with a 0.1% efficiency, and the bacteria can't survive outside the lab.

Usually, this misinterpretation leads to well-meaning, but overly enthusiastic predictions. But some companies intentionally use this stack of improbables to pump their stock.....