Comment by keepamovin

I guarantee my goal was not to nerd snipe HN. It's just such a huge amount of power, a giant spinning iron core, a planet sized magnetic field. Hmmm, I still feel there's a way to get more power than we expect out of that geomagnetic technically instead of the micro power from that Zn tube, imagine something like an AA battery's worth, but the size of a red-bull can.

Anyway, my next idea is what about tapping the Earth-Sun coupling. This is not "solar PV" territory, but rather the energy that the sun dumps into the Earth that is channeled through the field and produces effects like auroras, particle cascades.

The crazy thing is, this is an enormous amount of energy:

- 10–100 GW quiet, up to 1–10 TW (or more) in big storms.

It's global, but concentrated by field lines into ring-shaped auroral ovals over the poles. Would be cool if there was a way to tap it. It doesn't need daylight, unlike solar. It's constant, and 10-100x more in solar storms. Crazy power. Would be very cool to tap.