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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by soumerd_retardataire@lemmygrad.ml to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world

Seems to my ignorant eyes that we could always somehow split the power received into more manageable units, even if it has to be splitted a million times, 🤷‍♂️.

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[-] skeld@lemmy.world 40 points 1 year ago

Lightning has a peak power of 1TW for 30 microseconds according to Wikipedia, corresponding to an energy content of about 8000 Watt-hours. That is enough to run a 100 watt conventional light bulb for 80 hours, so not actually much energy. You would need to capture about half a million lightning strikes a second if you wanted to power the world that way, for example.

[-] Lopoloma@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

1,400,000,000 strikes earth every year

According to https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/types-of-weather/thunder-and-lightning/facts-about-lightning

That would be barely 45 strikes each second.
That's four magnitudes away from your cited goal of powering earth.

The reason noone talks about harnessing lightning as a power source is the diminishing returns on top of its unreliability and it being demanding on the tech it would need - which we know for decades now.

My conclusion is OP didn't ~~research~~ google his question first.

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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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