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.
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.
