Can lightning be harnessed Can lightning s abilities be harnessed at the moment?

It may not work now, using it is to engage in some experiments, not to use it in real life, according to the current speed of development of science and technology, that is, there should be some advanced places to develop it in ten years.

When the technology is developed, it is possible to use it as electrical energy.

As of July 18, 2020, there have been no reports confirming that lightning's capabilities can be harnessed

。But some of the additional effects produced by lightning can be exploitedThe details are as follows:

Lightning can turn some of the nitrogen in the air into nitrogen compounds, which can be washed down to the ground by rain. Every hectare of land on earth receives a few kilograms of this free fertilizer from high above in a year.

The electricity generated through lightning is about a billion watts, while super lightning is at least a hundred billion watts, and may even reach trillions to ten trillion watts. When lightning strikes, some of the oxygen in the air is turned into ozone. The high temperatures generated by the lightning process can kill more than 90% of the bacteria and microorganisms in the atmosphere, making the air purer and fresher.

There is a difficulty in harnessing the energy of lightning, that is, lightning cannot occur at a certain moment as people hope. In other words, lightning is not easy to control. In addition, although lightning is the most common natural phenomenon, according to statistics, there are only one or two lightning bolts per square kilometer per year on average.

The size of the thunderstorm cloud cells ranges from 1 km to 10 km, so each lightning bolt is separated by a large distance.

If a very high iron rod is erected to guide the mines, the number of lightning strikes will be more, but the number of lightning strikes the iron rods is still not very large. It has been calculated that in a thunderstorm season, lightning strikes lightning rods 400-800 meters high only 20 times. Therefore, the effective use of lightning energy is not yet possible.

In nature, lightning flashes are several kilometers long, the temperature is very high, and there is a lot of nitrogen and oxidation to produce nitrogen dioxide. The nitrogen dioxide produced by lightning dissolves in rainwater and becomes nitric acid with a very low concentration, and as soon as it falls into the soil, it immediately combines with other substances to become nitrate. Nitrates are good fertilizers.

It has been calculated that 100 to l000 grams of lightning-forming fertilizers enter the soil per square kilometer of land every year.

There are about 1.4 billion lightning strikes a year in the world, of which only about 25% are terrestrial lightning, and most of the rest are intra-cloud or inter-cloud lightning that cannot be used. In addition, assuming that all lightning can be used 100 percent and that there is no loss in capture, transmission and storage, the amount of electricity collected in a year is 490 billion kilowatt hours.

In 2009, about 20 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity were used worldwide, more than 40 times more than the amount of electricity contained in all available ground-based lightning. This means that all the lightning we can catch is only available worldwide for 9 days.

However, there are many more reasons. If you want to see how much it costs to catch these bolts: in order to catch every ground lightning, we have to build a lot of tall towers around the globe (think the Eiffel Tower in Paris).

That's a calculation that one of these towers would be built for every square mile of the Earth's 200 million square miles of surface.

Equipment that captures lightning energy must be able to handle extremely instantaneous currents. For this purpose, very thick conductive rods are used, as well as ultra-heavy circuits and supercapacitors.

Although we have not yet developed this energy storage technology, assuming that we can do it, and assuming that the energy system is 100% efficient (most energy systems are less than 70% to 80% efficient at their best), then we can imagine that each tower and capacitor will cost around £350,000. As a result, the cost of ground-based equipment alone (not taking into account the additional cost of the marine version of the equipment) is up to 67 trillion pounds. Not to mention the cost of installation, routine maintenance, and the cost of the network of high-voltage transmission lines that connect all the tall towers.

Fun Fact: In comparison, one hour of sunlight can produce electricity for a year, and we only need to use the roof to store the energy we need. So, I can't help but ask:

Why don't we cover all the roofs with solar panels? ”

1. It is very difficult and costly to catch lightning.

Capturing lightning power isn't as simple as installing a lightning rod. The instantaneous power of lightning is extremely large, with a voltage of millions of kilovolts and a current of tens of thousands of amperes, and the equipment that captures lightning must be able to withstand a very large instantaneous current, requiring very high iron towers, very thick conductive rods, ultra-heavy circuits and supercapacitors.

Even if you take great pains to take off the electricity, you don't get much energy

To sum it up:These things that look powerful but cannot be used to generate electricity are mainly unstable and explosive, but the ability to "sustain operations" is not strong, and they also need the strong support of energy storage equipment.

Of course, lightning can be used, because the power of lightning is too powerful, and the time it occurs is very short, and it can kill people in an instant, so no one has tried to study lightning yet.

It is not available. Because the deterrent is really very big, and ordinary people can't control it at all. So it can't be used at all. There is no one to navigate either.

One day in the future, lightning may be able to be used, so that lightning can be used reasonably, but not yet, because the power of lightning is also relatively large, and there is no way to use the current scientific and technological means.

The idea of capturing electricity from lightning is indeed a big idea, but the reason why humans have not built "lightning power stations" has been because it is not practically feasible.

The energy release of lightning is so great that a single lightning bolt can heat the surrounding air to 10,000 degrees, which is equivalent to 5 times the temperature of the sun's surface. The enormous heat caused the air to expand and vibrate at a rather rapid rate, resulting in a rumbling thunder.

It is estimated that there are 1.4 billion lightning strikes per year around the world. Each bolt of lightning releases about 1 billion joules, equivalent to 280 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is enough to last a 30-watt light bulb for a year. As a result, global lightning can produce up to 14 billion joules of energy a year, equivalent to 390 billion kilowatt hours.

However, more lightning is found in the clouds, which can account for up to three-quarters, and only a quarter of the lightning reaches the ground. For example, if Tanchunguo is able to capture all the ground lightning, the maximum amount of electricity that can be obtained is 98 billion kilowatt hours. In comparison, humans currently use about 30 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity throughout the year, so ground-based lightning can only provide the most that humans need.

Considering that it is impossible to achieve 100% efficiency, the amount of electricity generated by lightning will be even lower.

The appearance of lightning is random, and it is not that lightning appears all the time somewhere. It is very difficult to capture the world's lightning unless you have to install a fairly dense receiver, but this is obviously impractical and too costly.

On the other hand, each lightning bolt emits a huge amount of energy in a short period of time (only 30 milliseconds), and the receiving device needs to be able to withstand the huge instantaneous power, which is not possible at this stage.

Therefore, although the energy of lightning is immense, it is difficult for humans to efficiently obtain electricity from lightning. Instead of using lightning, it is better to use solar energy, and it is more practical to try to improve the photoelectric conversion efficiency by grinding the chain.

Absolutely. Lightning is also a type of energy, and as long as there is equipment, it is enough to induce lightning – to store lightning – to convert lightning into the required energy.

Lightning does not generate electricity from the power of electricity, as lightning itself is an electrical energy. And if you want to use lightning to generate electricity, you must have a container that can store lightning. But this is not possible with current science and technology.

At present, human beings have no way to use the energy of lightning, and without this technology, it may be possible to do it with the development of science and technology.