physics

Harvesting lightning energy

Harvesting lightning energy is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Harvesting lightning energy rather than just read about it. In short: Since the late 1980s, there have been several attempts to investigate the possibility of harvesting lightning energy. A single bolt of lightning carries a relatively large amount of energy (approximately 5 gigajoules or about the energy stored in 40 Imperial gallons or 200 litres of gasoline).

Key takeaways

Harvesting lightning energy belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Harvesting lightning energy to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Harvesting lightning energy from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Since the late 1980s, there have been several attempts to investigate the possibility of harvesting lightning energy. A single bolt of lightning carries a relatively large amount of energy (approximately 5 gigajoules or about the energy stored in 40 Imperial gallons or 200 litres of gasoline). However, this energy is concentrated in a small location and is passed during an extremely short period of time (microseconds); therefore, extremely high electrical power is involved. It has been proposed that the energy contained in lightning be used to generate hydrogen from water, to harness the energy from rapid heating of water due to lightning, or to use a group of lightning arresters to harness a strike, either directly or by converting it to heat or mechanical energy, or to use inductors spaced far enough away so that a safe fraction of the energy might be captured.

Overview A technology capable of harvesting lightning energy would need to be able to rapidly capture the high power involved in a lightning bolt. Additionally, lightning is sporadic, and therefore energy would have to be collected and stored; it is difficult to convert high-voltage electrical power to the lower-voltage power that can be stored. In the summer of 2007, an alternative energy company called Alternate Energy Holdings, Inc. (AEHI) tested a method for capturing the energy in lightning bolts. The design for the system had been purchased from an Illinois inventor named Steve LeRoy, who had reportedly been able to power a 60-watt light bulb for 20 minutes using the energy captured from a small flash of artificial lightning. The method involved a tower, a means of shunting off a large portion of the incoming energy, and a capacitor to store the rest. According to Donald Gillispie, CEO of AEHI, they "couldn't make it work," although "given enough time and money, you could probably scale this thing up... it's not black magic; it's truly math and science, and it could happen." According to Martin A. Uman, co-director of the Lightning Research Laboratory at the University of Florida and a leading authority on lightning, "a single lightning strike, while fast and bright, contains very little energy by the time it gets down to earth, and dozens of lightning towers like those used in the system tested by AEHI would be needed to operate five 100-watt light bulbs for the course of a year". When interviewed by The New York Times, he stated that "the energy in a thunderstorm is comparable to that of an atomic bomb, but trying to harvest the energy of lightning from the ground is hopeless". Another major challenge when attempting to harvest energy from lightning is the impossibility of predicting when and where thunderstorms will occur. Even during a storm, it is very difficult to tell where exactly lightning will strike.

Directed plasma channels To facilitate the harvesting of lightning, a laser-induced plasma channel (LIPC) could theoretically be used to influence lightning to strike in a predictable location. A high power laser could be used to form an ionized column of gas, which would act as an atmospheric conduit for electrical discharges of lightning, which would direct the lightning to a ground station for harvesting. Teramobile, an international project initiated jointly by a French-German collaboration of CNRS (France) and DFG (Germany), has managed to trigger electric activity in thunderclouds by ultrashort lasers. A large peak pulse power was used, 5 terawatts, although the average power was only 2.7 W, as a result of the extremely short (150 femtosecond) pulse length. For the moment, the application of laser-channeled lightning is to use energy to divert the lightning and prevent damage instead of harvesting the lightning energy.

See also Distribution of lightning Jean-Pierre Wolf Ludger Wöste

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Harvesting lightning energy

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Harvesting lightning energy claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Harvesting lightning energy before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Harvesting lightning energy ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Harvesting lightning energy

In research: Harvesting lightning energy appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Harvesting lightning energy in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Harvesting lightning energy is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Energy sources, Lightning, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Harvesting lightning energy outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Harvesting lightning energy in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Harvesting lightning energy means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Harvesting lightning energy out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Harvesting lightning energy in simple terms?

Why does Harvesting lightning energy matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Harvesting lightning energy?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Harvesting lightning energy.