Re: Feeding Lightning Bolts back into the grid
- From: "Androcles" <Headmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:59:24 +0100
"Cwatters" <colin.wattersNOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:y_ydnTrtTfPldz7VnZ2dnUVZ8v6dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<rick_sobie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:611c2df1-cf11-4c08-bb1e-e5c63bf2ff85@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"one trillion watts, briefly burning up more electrical power than is
being used in the entire United States. Monsters of one billion volts
and over 100,000 amperes are not unknown."
At current rates, each bolt fed back into the grid would net you about
300,000 dollars, so it is probably a good investment in some places to
build some type of lightning bolt receptor.
Hypothetically all you would need is a lightning rod and then a grid
of some type of condensers that could store up that energy that is
released in a flash.
Then just release it gradually back into the grid.
Any thoughts on how you could harness that electricity released in a
lightning bolt?
You would need some kind of storage capacitor. Not easy to see how to make that capacitor though.
Look at a Wimshurst machine... you charge the capacitor (Leyden jar) until a spark
leaps across the spark gap and discharges. Since lightning is just a big spark you
have to make the spark gap higher than the clouds. Anything less and the energy
(which is not all that much anyway, it is too brief, we want megawatt-HOURS
and domestic meters measure kilowatt HOURS) will discharge before you can
do anything with it, so you need a Leyden jar bigger than the Chrysler building to
store enough energy to split a tree in two, then hope for a storm to happen by.
A sawmill can do that quite efficiently without waiting for the weather.
If the energy in a lightning strike was as great as the OP is exaggerating whole
forests would be devastated with one strike. The idea is simply ludicrous.
It's been 40 years since anyone called a capacitor a "condenser", rick sobie
will calling tuberculosis "consumption" next.
.
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- Feeding Lightning Bolts back into the grid
- From: rick_sobie
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