I have been thinking about trying to do this exact thing for over forty years.
One approach I thought of was to set up a huge capacitor with a large transformer so that when the lightning hit the antenna, you could get the LC circuit to oscillate. So far I have not done more than think about it, the consequences for failure are very severe. Plus I don't think my neighbors would appreciate my attracting lightning to the house.
I have some other ideas, but they are still in the thinking stage.
I would love to hear any ideas you have come up with.
I like your idea, but every grid transformer ive heard of that has been struck by lightning has been destroyed instantly. Therefore I'd say stick to the capacitor method, I dont know how many it would take but it would be alot, (1000s) connected in series before the strike and then reconfigured to series parallel to get the desired voltage and then use this with an inverter for converting the electicity to national grid or off grid power. alternatively the energy could be used to change water into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel cells or whatever.
Yes I thought about using the electricity to separate hydrogen and oxygen. It would probably work, but with that much gas released at once could create a really big containment problem.
Another idea I had was to setup a salt water battery. You can store a tremendous amount of energy with simple materials and then you can selectively tap into the circuits at specific points and pull off very well regulated DC power. I have been looking into some of Tesla's notes to see how far he got with this idea. I know he had some ideas based upon some of his other research.
The amount of power in a single lightning strike is not as big as many people think.
The danger from lightning is that the power it is released in a short time.
Compared with gasoline, you can create a huge explosion with a spoon of gasoline, but if you put it in your car it will not bring you very far.
The second problem is to catch many lightning strikes. Thunderstorms don’t stay very long at the same place. Only some buildings on top of a hill are hit more than once during a thunderstorm.
So you need equipment capable of handling high peak powers while the amount of power you could catch is low.
Yes, I have been looking into this approach. I think the use of a massively huge capacitor may be the key to storing the charge created by a lightning strike. First, you need to hold a huge electron transfer in a short period of time, then you need to be able to slowly pull the electrons off under controlled circuits to make it useful.
I had originally thought that I could use a large inductor, but the reluctance of one that large makes it impractical. I really wish I knew what Nicola Tesla knew about these types of circuits.
Right now, I think a electric charge harvester circuit might be able to slowly pull down the charge from the air and not trigger a full strike. Still thinking about it though.
By the way, I think I saw the bottom of both a Red and Blue Sprite over my house during a recent thunderstorm. I have contacted NASA and several of the severe storm experts to see if they can confirm that they occurred and that I really saw them at that time. If so, I think I understand how they are triggered.
Perhaps direct electricity capture is not the approach you should take.
A lightening strike temperature can be in the range of 30,000 °C (54,000 °F). If you are able to capture even a small portion of that potential heat energy, that would be an achievement. Though a strike's footprint is rather small, approx 1" diameter. If the bolt is grounded through a tube lined with thermalvoltaic elements, it might work out. Or, funnel strikes through a medium that can absorb heat. Store the energy for later.
Also, DAB is on to something. In 2007, Alternate Energy Holdings, Inc demonstrated that by shunting a (artificial) strike with a capacitor residual energy, they could power a 60wall light bulb for 20 minutes. However, the company said that their tech could not reproduce the effect all the time.
I thought about the heat transfer approach and you have the same problem with thermal transfer as you do with the electrical transfer. Too much, too fast, and too little time to actually store the energy efficiently. Most materials do not have the specific heat transfer capability to change state during the strike time.
However, if you could use the flash burst to trigger a fusion event in an enclosed plasma chamber, then you just might be able to contain the energy long enough to pull the electrons out of the plasma in a controlled level. Unfortunately, the amount of power transferred is different for each lightning flash, so you really don't know what your upper most limit needs to be. Either way, the danger factor is quite high.
Keep thinking everyone, I feel it in my bones that we can solve this problem, we just have to keep looking.
As far as I've been learnt lighting strikes carry small amount of energy and capturing it is really hard. Strikes are caused by difference of voltages across earth, clouds and other clouds. Sun heats earth surface causing planet-wide winds, winds are causing clouds to rub each other which leads to electrification due to triboelectric effect. When charge is big enough electrical breakdown occurs. I think that there's a plenty of means to capture sun's energy before it transforms into lighting bolt. I always thought that it would be much easer to actually collect charge using baloon-suspended conductive wires. System of rectifiers would connect several lines and ground so current flow would always occur when charge difference is present. The problem is such wires are heavy (meaby carbon nanowires someday?) and baloons require constant gas replacement due to inevitable leaking.
I thought of using the balloon method tied to cables to bring down charge, but the wind effects in thunderstorms make them too vulnerable. Plus, to get into the spot where you can tap into significant voltages you have to go up a couple of thousand feet, which makes your balloons a navigation hazard to aircraft.
That said, if you look at the bell designed by Ben Franklin back in the 1700's, he used just a small antenna to collect the charge difference from the air to the ground and he let the electrical charge attraction pull a striker against the side of the bell. As the thunderstorm got closer, the bell would ring more often, giving out a warning plus giving you distance information about how close the threat was.
I always thought that you could use the same principle to pull a number of cam wheels, similar to how your car's crankshaft works to let the static charge rotate a normal generator. You could build up a suitable gear ratio so that the static electricity could move the shaft and use a high number of the "electronic" pistons begin a full rotation for the generator.
