Lightning = Usable Electricity?

Today I read an interesting article which reminded me of a talk in Physics class this year. Their ideas were quite intriguing. It claimed that perhaps there was somehow the possibility to capture and store Lightning as usable electricity..


As most of us know, electricity from lightning contains incredibly high voltage and current and if harnessed could potentially power a town for a month. The problem is, the only way to store raw electrons would be to use a capacitor rather than chemical ions such as in batteries. An example of a capacitor used in large scales like this would be in electric cars. Their batteries function much like a capacitor.


Such high volts of electricity would destroy the capacitor causing it to arc or even blow up at that extremity. The capacitor would have to be the size of Wyoming and several miles high. Inefficient.


So, in response to this, perhaps there are other ways of harnessing the power.

I have an idea:


Since cloud-to-ground lightning gets dissipated and neutralized when it hits the ground in the form of heat, this heat could then be used to melt a metal underground. This would then boil some water. The high kinetic energy of the convection currents happening within the water would then spin a turbine. (As we all know is an electromagnet - as discovered by Nikolai Tesla) This would produce electricity. A lot of energy comes from lightning which could melt a lot of metal, boil a lot of water, spin a lot of turbines or a giant turbine, and maybe produce a lot of electricity?


So to conclude my post I'll say this:

Do I think lightning capture is plausible? No. Not with today's technology. Perhaps in the future we can build a capacitor to store the electrons from lightning or make hydro power more efficient. But not today.