Lightning strike harvesting

Hi,

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.

Hi Maciej,

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.

Anyway, that's just one idea I had.

Thanks,

DAB

Solutions to such problems are always a compromise between efficiency, gain and most important profitability 1122.contentimage_1.png I always imagined that balloons are suspended above cloud level (which is not a solution for storms since as we go higher winds are gaining strength) and wires are constantly collecting charge just like in Van De Graaff generator combs collect charge from belt. Instead of collecting short spikes of high voltage such system would collect energy from constant current flow (friction between non-cloudy wind should generate power too, so such solution would theoretically work 24/7). I have just thought about balloon problem and suddenly recalled such project:

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that would solve gas leaking problem!

Hi everyone, The more I think about it, the more I'm sure we don't have the tectnology to capture the heat or electiric charge, but we can contain the hydrogen gas from Electrolysis and let the oxygen go directly into the atmosphere to help regenerate the ozone layer. so with this in mind, but not to put an end to the question, the answer is yes we can harness the power of lightning. And as tech gets better we will be able to harness heat and electric charge directly in tsome futur time.

Hi Kevin,

I agree that we can probably harness the power of electric charge in the atmosphere, but if you release the oxygen at sea level, it is more likely to react with material in the lower atmosphere then it will rise to the ozone layer.  Besides, the ozone layer is self repairing through the absorbtion of UV rays at the upper atmosphere and the reaction with monotonic oxygen hitting the earths upper atmosphere as it comes in from the sun.

Still, keeping the hydrogen and oxygen makes affordable fuel cells possible for filling demand needs for electrical production overloads or low cycle times.

Keep thinking, we can solve these problems.

Thanks

DAB

Hi all, I've been thinking, 1, first we need the lighting to strike where we want it,  2, then we need to hold it longer than the strike time, and 3,  we need to use it in a gainful way before it disipates.

1, So the first part is difficult and I don't know how dangerous gama rays are but, If we use a radioactive source that emits gama rays, we can use the ionizing propertise to encourage lighting strikes.

To put it simply we only allow the gama rays to travel in certain upward directions so that when a charged cloud drifts into the ionized air, it will discarge down thourgh it towards the radioactive source.

The source would be encased in a stainless steal tank filled with lead, to absorb the ray and any other radiation being emitted and keep it safe to everyone below. stainless steal tubes would be possitioned into the tank to allow gama rays to escape only in the directions that we want.  These rays will ionize the air in there path and in doing so make them conductive.

2, The stainless steal tank would be massiveley insulated from the ground, making the stainless steal tank and the ground a capacitor. These stainless steal tanks could be sited up and down the country

and would be connected together so as to increase the overall storage capacitance and get access to lighting strikes everywhere that they are harvested from, this will allow us the time to use the heat locally and the charge anywhere along the chain.

3. Heat could be used to drive stirling heat engines to generate electricity for use locally, the charge would be used in the standard ways to supply power to homes and industry.

Tell me what you think.

Kevin 

Hi Kevin,

Gamma rays are high energy particles that are very bad for living tissue.  Luckily the Japanese and I think several major laboratories around the world demonstrated that you could draw lightning to a reciever using an inexpensive particle beam projector.

I like your idea about the insulated tanks for storage.  It might be possible to use them to flash water to steam.  You could then draw off the energy through a normal steam turbine.  If you set up a number of the tanks in a given area, you might be able to pull down enough lightning energy to produce a sustained level of power.

As I recall, the particle beam generators had a open air range of 25 to 50 miles.  So if you set up a couple of lines of these stations along known storm tracks, you might be able to drain a lot of the destructive charges from the clouds and moderate the storm damage in addition to creating usable power.

Good thinking,

DAB

Hi DAB,

I did think of one drawback, once the system has taken on a charge, it will automaticaly attract an opposite charge which if collected would nutralise the already collected charge, this means the collected charge should be used as soon as possible. Nice to know about particle beam generators, I thought Gama rays were dangerous, I just didnt know how dangerous.

If we are going to look at fashing water to steam from the thermal energy of the lightning strike, then why not let the charge go to ground though heater elements to add to the water heating.

Thanks Kevin.

Hi Kevin,

We discussed that problem earlier, but basically the lightning events happen so fast that you need to find a creative way to handle the huge voltage and current pulse.  That's why I liked your idea of the  steel tanks.  They could be constructed thick enough to absorbe the energy and change it into steam.  I am hoping that someone with more modern thermodynamics skills than I can do some calculations to see if it is even possible.

The conversion from high current and high voltage to a controlled energy is the big problem to harvesting the energy.

Keep thinking,

DAB

Hi DAB

Yes but I was thinking, if the tank can absorb the thermal and electrical charge, we can use the thermal energy to flash water into steam, as you said,
and use it to start a steam turbine generator, and since the lightning strike came down one of the particle beams, its likely that the ice
in the cloud will still be generating electricity and it will be at the same charge value as the tank, in effect while the particle beam
is in contact with the cloud it will be connected to the tank system and enlarge the overall size of the capacitor. this gives us a unique opportunity.

When the lightning struct the tank and flashed water into steam within the tank. sensors could be used to detect the rise in temperature and at that
location, using a very high voltage switch, turn on a high resistance ceramic heater to raise more steam and keep the steam turbine turning
but now it's not just the energy collected in the tank chain, its also the energy in the cloud, which is still being generated by the ice in the cloud.

Now knowing that the positive charge always collects at the top of the cloud, it would be easy to point the particle emmitters and gather
the correct polarty charges from all the clouds in the area. at the same time particle beams would be pointed at the base of the clouds and connect

the negative energy to the ground to complete the circuit and extract the full potential from the cloud.

It may be possible to do this automatically using radar, satalite images, and heat sensors.

I would love to see a green power generator like this work. we could even seed clouds with liquid air to make ice crystals where there are none,

though I dont know if that would or could be made cost effective.

Tell me what you think I would like to brain storm this problem, with many of us throwing in ideas we should be able to get somewhere.

Kevin.

Hi Kevin,

I think you might be on to something here.  We could use the particle beam like a vacuum cleaner by scanning it across the sky at different altitudes to pull down at least some of the charge to the capicitor tanks.  The current flow through the steel alone should be sufficient resistance to heat up the water, if not turn it to steam.

This approach could be set up along known wind paths, which generally run west to east in the mid latitudes and east to west at the equator.  Our ancestors used these reliable winds to sail the world, so there should be no problem in setting up a line of storage tanks with a particle beam generator spaced every 50 miles or so.  We could refine the positioning once we discover which altitude carries the best current source.

If we wanted to do a serious demonstration, we could possible get funding through the insurance industry.  If this approach were successful, it would greatly reduce the random buildup of charge in the atmosphere and therefore reduce the amount of lightning actually hitting the ground.  The reduced cost for insurance payouts could well make the cost of the system economical.

Definitely worth a trial by some laboratory or university.  I need to think about this a while to see if I can come up with some current hardware that could do the job.

Keep thinking, we may be on track for this to actually work.

DAB

Greetings...  I have actually been thinking about this from a different perspective.  But we won't go into that part. 2100.contentimage_4722.png

1)a) A charged particle beam (+ or -) can be used to connect the 2 capacitive plates...the ground and the cloud.

2) Yes, that is a good idea that creating an effect to limit the  discharge to other areas by causing a discharge in a 'SafeZone'.

3) But if done in the wrong way, would essentially super-charge the cloud.

1)b) The beam would create an ion channel acting like a  conductor and directing the discharge.  In this case, you could use a  high energy laser, since this also

    ionizes the air in its path.

4)  Storage or energy conversion...   I envision a device like a  transformer that could electro-magnetically capture the charge and then  transfer it.   The only issue that you have to send it into a large  power grid.  Dividing up the current and /or the voltage levels.

Philip

Greetings...  I have actually been thinking about this from a different perspective.  But we won't go into that part. 2100.contentimage_4722.png

1)a) A charged particle beam (+ or -) can be used to connect the 2 capacitive plates...the ground and the cloud.

2) Yes, that is a good idea that creating an effect to limit the  discharge to other areas by causing a discharge in a 'SafeZone'.

3) But if done in the wrong way, would essentially super-charge the cloud.

1)b) The beam would create an ion channel acting like a  conductor and directing the discharge.  In this case, you could use a  high energy laser, since this also

    ionizes the air in its path.

4)  Storage or energy conversion...   I envision a device like a  transformer that could electro-magnetically capture the charge and then  transfer it.   The only issue that you have to send it into a large  power grid.  Dividing up the current and /or the voltage levels.

Philip