this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts
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Lightning has a peak power of 1TW for 30 microseconds according to Wikipedia, corresponding to an energy content of about 8000 Watt-hours. That is enough to run a 100 watt conventional light bulb for 80 hours, so not actually much energy. You would need to capture about half a million lightning strikes a second if you wanted to power the world that way, for example.
I double-checked and you're entirely right, i didn't know that, i've heard many years ago that a single big lightning strike could power a large city for months(, while it's indeed more a matter of minutes, if not less), and thought that it was a technological problem(, and that, e.g., flying devices anchored on the ground to either a portable infrastructure or a nationwide-extended network, could potentially make up for the unreliability and follow the storms, or even perhaps cause them one day).
Now i understand even better why solar power is preferred, thanks !
A single lightning strike could power a large city for a few milliseconds. Not even seconds or minutes. Definitely not months.
Who's using conventional 100w bulbs?
Get a 20w LED and it's just 400 hours. Better, but still not much.
So if I'm wearing an Arduino to power some LED's for cosplay, how often do I have to get struck by lightning to keep it going?
Only once, and they'll remain lit for as long as it matters to you.
Hit a blunt to get lit for half a day.
Get hit by lightning to be lit for the rest of your life.
I think my LEDs are around 6W? So what would that be? 1,333 hours per LED. Or my 3000W oven for 2 hours and 40 minutes.
Yeah, we would need a lot of lightning strikes. My solar panels generated about 34,000kWh today, or 4.25 lightning strikes.
You sure they didn't generate 34kWh? If you did mean 34000 you must have an assload of panels
Lmao, you are right. That's what I get for commenting when I'm half asleep.
I'm a hobbyist in electronics repair. Conventional light bulbs make great AC current limiters and have a built-in indicator. ๐
According to https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/types-of-weather/thunder-and-lightning/facts-about-lightning
That would be barely 45 strikes each second.
That's four magnitudes away from your cited goal of powering earth.
The reason noone talks about harnessing lightning as a power source is the diminishing returns on top of its unreliability and it being demanding on the tech it would need - which we know for decades now.
My conclusion is OP didn't ~~research~~ google his question first.
I thought a bolt of lightning can produce 1.21 gigawatts? Doc Brown said this in Back to the Future movie.
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