Seems to my ignorant eyes that we could always somehow split the power received into more manageable units, even if it has to be splitted a million times, 🤷‍♂️.

  • skeld
    41·
    3 years ago

    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.

    • soumerd_retardataire@lemmygrad.mlOP
      5·
      3 years ago

      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 !

      • Technoguyfication@lemmy.mlEnglish
        3·
        3 years ago

        A single lightning strike could power a large city for a few milliseconds. Not even seconds or minutes. Definitely not months.

      • themeatbridge
        8·
        3 years ago

        Get a 20w LED and it’s just 400 hours. Better, but still not much.

        • AgentOrangesicle
          6·
          3 years ago

          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?

          • themeatbridge
            5·
            3 years ago

            Only once, and they’ll remain lit for as long as it matters to you.

            • Lopoloma
              1·
              3 years ago

              Hit a blunt to get lit for half a day.
              Get hit by lightning to be lit for the rest of your life.

        • Dandroid@dandroid.app
          4·
          3 years ago

          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.

      • skeld
        2·
        3 years ago

        I’m a hobbyist in electronics repair. Conventional light bulbs make great AC current limiters and have a built-in indicator. 😂

    • Lopoloma
      1·
      3 years ago

      1,400,000,000 strikes earth every year

      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.

    • CamEnglish
      11·
      3 years ago

      I thought a bolt of lightning can produce 1.21 gigawatts? Doc Brown said this in Back to the Future movie.