I have a Qu.?
As there is any possibility to use some few energy of LIGHTNING which produce in thunder? If YES,OR you have any idea about, then please help me.
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From wiki....This might give u an idea....
Harvesting lightning energy
Since the late 1980s there have been several attempts to investigate the possibility of harvesting energy from lightning. While a single bolt of lightning carries a relatively large amount of energy, this energy is concentrated in a small location and is passed during an extremely short period of time (milliseconds); therefore, extremely high electrical power is involved.[123]
It has been proposed that the energy contained in lightning be used to generate hydrogen from water, or to harness the energy from rapid heating of water due to lightning.[124] A technology capable of harvesting lightning energy would need to be able to capture rapidly the high power involved in a lightning bolt. Several schemes have been proposed, but the low energy involved in each lightning bolt render lightning power harvesting from ground based lightning rods as impractical.[125]
According to Northeastern University physicists Stephen Reucroft and John Swain, a lightning bolt carries a few million joules of energy, enough to power a 100-watt bulb for 5.5 hours. Additionally, lightning is sporadic, and therefore energy would have to be collected and stored; it is difficult to convert high-voltage electrical power to the lower-voltage power that can be stored.[124]
In the summer of 2007, an alternative energy company called Alternate Energy Holdings (AEH) tested a method for capturing the energy in lightning bolts. The design for the system had been purchased from an Illinois inventor named Steve LeRoy, who had reportedly been able to power a 60-watt light bulb for 20 minutes using the energy captured from a small flash of artificial lightning. The method involved a tower, a means of shunting off a large portion of the incoming energy, and a capacitor to store the rest. According to Donald Gillispie, CEO of AEH, they "couldn't make it work," although "given enough time and money, you could probably scale this thing up... it's not black magic; it's truly math and science, and it could happen."[126]
According to Dr. Martin A. Uman, co-director of the Lightning Research Laboratory at the University of Florida and a leading authority on lightning,[127] a single lighting strike, while fast and bright, contains very little energy, and dozens of lighting towers like those used in the system tested by AEH would need to operate five 100-watt light bulbs for the course of a year. When interviewed by The New York Times, he stated that the energy in a thunderstorm is comparable to that of an atomic bomb, but trying to harvest the energy of lightning from the ground is "hopeless".[126]
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hey nitu....an interesting topic....i have wondered about this too...i have read the below info before...guess it might be possible....but are u taking it for your final year project?????
An inventor in Illinois is working on a device to generate electricity from lightning.
Each small three-foot bolt generates enough electricity to illuminate a 60-watt light bulb for 20 minutes. But a full-scale system, LeRoy believes, could power 30,000 homes for a day with just one lightning bolt. Given that the average Midwest thunderstorm releases enough electrical energy to power the entire U.S. for 20 minutes, who knows what the potential is for the harvesting of lightning fields and arrays of bolt conductors.
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