Monday, August 14, 2006
If Someone Takes This Idea And Then Makes Billions Off Of It, All While Saving The World, I'll Be PISSED!
I'm not inventor or scientist or engineer or anything, but I've always wondered if and/or how one could harness lightning for energy. I mean, couldn't you put up a bunch of lightning rods connected to batteries or something? Just think of all the energy just one moderate thunderstorm could provide! It'd get us off oil right quick.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Awe ... ::pinches your cheeks:: You're so cute when you think you have an original idea!
Harnessing lighting isn't economical or entirely possible at the moment. The bolt wants to ground itself and typically destroys whatever sort of system you're trying to channel it into via rods. There's also the question of storage. Where do you put all this "lightning power"? I read something about storing it in capacitors or flywheels, but it's all very new and cutting edge. There are people working on it, though. I think there are even a few duking it out over the patent. The problem is they refuse to reveal the technology, which discredits them, obviously.
Right now we waste more power creating "man-made" lightning than we gain trying to capture it, but it's always a possibility for the future. I've read about using it as a supplemental form of power, sort of along the lines of solar panels. Yet, much like solar panels, it's not exactly cost effective for us little folk. There's no such thing as free energy, after all. lol
Lighting power ... Hell, if the Doc could do it in Back to the Future, why can't we?! lol
Try a google search, Frank!
http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=gd&q=energy+from+lightning
Sadly, you aren't the first to have thought of this -- glad your heart is in the right place, though!
As for the solar panels mentioned above: I don't know too much about it but I recall that there are a few ordinary people in London who installed solar panels (at great cost) but, several years down the line are actually selling power back to the national grid. If this works in dark little England then surely it's possible elsewhere. I shall have to investigate this more.
Yeah, you know I SHOULD have done a Google search. Too lazy. *hehe* And I'm not shocked (get it?!?) that someone already thought of it or that, at the moment, it isn't economically feasible. I think, eventually, we'll have all sorts of energy sources. Whether America or another country (less beholden to the oil industry) does it, who knows.
Post a Comment