Comment by Mystery-Machine
9 hours ago
Based on this and other comments in this HN thread, harnessing the lightning energy for potential use wouldn't be a replacement for a power plant. However, if the resources for the lightning energy capture are/become too cheap, this could be a replacement for solar panels. Instead of replacing the power plant, it would replace/complement electricity production of a single home/building. Maybe with big enough batteries that can capture this energy, it could become a viable solution?
> Maybe with big enough batteries that can capture this energy, it could become a viable solution?
No, it could not. The problem is that lighning strikes are so short, that their middling amount of energy still results in an insane amount of electrical power (for a very short time). And electrical power is the primary driver of cost in most components here.
Capturing lighning is like building literally a hundred electrical substations just to run them for 50 microseconds a day, 10 days per year. Our planet simply does not have the lighning density for this to ever work out.
All that (very expensive!) capture infrastructure would basically sit uselessly for almost all the time (even in the middle of a lightning storm!).