Why We Can't Extract Electricity FromLightening? | Details About Lightening

The main reason behind is the cost of tower and circuit system, absence of charge collecting system within 30 second, only few lightening striking the ground and not able to fulfil world desired amount of electricity.

Lets talk each in details:

Facts About Lightening:

1. Each lightening strike has on average five billion joules of energy or 1400 KW of energy if we assume zero loss in transfer  and storage.
2. Lightening strikes over a year are around 1.4 billion

Reasons Behind Not Extracting Electricty

Need Of Fast Charge storing Device

The equipment to capture the electrical energy in a strike would have to handle the extreme amount of charge in only around 30 millisecond(approximate duration of lightening). To handle such kind of instantaneous power, heavy conduction rods would need to be used with ultra-heavy duty electricity circuits and storage super capacitors.

Due To High Cost

We do not have above discussed system with us. If assume to do so with 100 % efficiency then the cost of such system would be around 350,000 Euro for each tower after then maintaince cost would be extra.

Not Able To Fulfill World Required Energy

Among all lightening only 25 % strikes to ground. But the world uses 40 times the electrical energy to hypothetical lightening energy strike. So all lightening energy can give electricity to world for 9 days only. 

Others Source Of Energy Are Moe Efficient

Others sources of energy are more cheaper and efficient. In compare to lightening energy, one hour of sunlight has the same amount of energy that we use in a year’s .