Why Can't We Use Lightning for Electricity?

[@SciShow]

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[@TrumpTheRapist]

WHO VOTED FOR A RAPIST!

[@RD9_Designs]

For a related topic and a future video, why hasn't the world gone back to Tesla's free energy invention? The whole world could stop burning coal and interfering in waterways, and spending money to provide electricity for their regions! It would be a win-win for everyone, including the planet!

[@benedetti9000]

You forgot to talk about harvesting the potential difference BEFORE the lightning that would prevent the lightning itself, the electricity would be constant.

[@PhoenixRevealed]

That's not Ohm's Law, which is that current equals voltage divided by resistance (I = E/R), where resistance is measured in Ohms. What you describe is Watt's law and the unit of power is the Watt. Come on SciShow... that's a pretty egregious error regarding arguablly the most basic and important formula in electronics.

[@joshyoung1440]

You're right. How _egregious_ of them to mix up two equivalent laws. Please stop with the melodrama.

[@Achill101]

​@@joshyoung1440 - for a science show: Yes. It's not a one-man show but a collaboration, and they should have definitely caught it. . . . What else of what they say cannot be trusted?

[@jamesdyer2234]

The formula for Ohm's law is V=IR. You are talking about Watt's Law is P = IV.

[@vectorsahel5420]

V=IR is seriously the goat equation, on par with F = ma

[@mastershooter64]

@@vectorsahel5420 I definitely don't think so, there are a lot more non-ohmic components to deal with than particles which don't obey F = ma in everyday life

[@Larke_]

​@@mastershooter64There aren't really any ohmic components tho, also V = IR, or V/I = R isn't really ohms law, its just the definition of resistance, a component that follows ohm's law is just a component that it's resistance is constant, of which there's none

[@xxTHExxABYSSxx]

Lol imagine a science show trying to tell us what's what, spreading incorrect information. Gotta love it.

[@rasmis]

Also; 30 KWh per day per household?! That's a mad average. In Denmark a house with 4 occupants use ≈ 14 KWh per day.

[@48Boxer]

I saw a documentary about a scientist in 1955 that was able to use a lightning strike to power a flux capacitor to travel to 1985

[@doktormcnasty]

I read about this other doctor from the 1800s who used a lightning strike to bring a guy, who was composed of body parts from different dead people, to life.

[@hancocki]

Great Scott! ​@@doktormcnasty Now thats Wilder!

[@48Boxer]

@@doktormcnasty Heavy!

[@iparagonepersonalvlogs1061]

He then discovered quantum entanglement as his test subject he sent to 1985 came BACK from 1985!

[@Beryllahawk]

That is the first time I've UNDERSTOOD what the hell a capacitor actually is! Thank you for making it make sense for someone very non-math-inclined!

[@socrabe]

Next step : the flux capacitor!

[@joshyoung1440]

Then you haven't actually looked it up before, because the concept requires zero math to understand... the explanation is frickin EVERYWHERE, presented just as simply as here... so...

[@LordBrittish]

*ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE GIGAWATTS?!*

[@richardl6751]

At least.

[@roarshackstudios5193]

Great Scott!

[@travisinthetrunk]

Jiggawatt

[@patrickjorda5523]

Flux capacitor..😮

[@LeprechaunJackson]

Glad I’m not the only one who thought this too 🤣

[@srwapo]

So, you're striking down the idea?

[@RayApollo]

HEH

[@TPixelAdventures]

It just didn't have enough power behind it.

[@dx-ek4vr]

I'm just shocked how much resistance this idea has gotten

[@charlotteblanchard]

Thunderous applause for that joke😂

[@zat-1-fury]

This is the comment that needs to be on the top of the video 😅 Plz remove the ai bot with a #### for a pfp 😭

[@hansjzeller]

Others already pointed out the mistake in the video at 5:46: 1000 GW * 30 microseconds is 30 Megawatt-seconds, not 30 Watt-seconds. Maybe you can add a second correction to the video description.

[@oliviervancantfort5327]

There is a big problem with this video: at 0:40, it is mentioned that lightning contains billions of joules and then at 5:40, it becomes 8 kWh. As 1kWh = 3.6 million joules (both are units of energy), 8 kWh gives just under 29 million joules. What happened with the billions ???

[@oliviervancantfort5327]

Besides, the result of the calculation should not be 30 watts-seconds but 30 megawatts-seconds (I.e 30 megajoules)

[@mitodunn7179]

Maybe the difference is the energy going to the light and sound produced?

[@Larke_]

​​@@mitodunn7179that would make a lot of sense, heat also, like the lighting makes air into plasma, that's a lot of heat. But also they did say that P = V*I is ohm's law so... Maybe its just wrong? Idk

[@nisper5396]

Yeah, I’m not particularly good with math but that didn’t seem right to me either. Complete change from the first half to the second half of the video. Hoping it was just an honest mistake and not an attempt to disregard and ridicule new ideas for sustainable energy sources.

[@Pingviinimursu]

​@@nisper5396 I trust their team, so probably just a mistake by them or this commenter (I didn't check any of the math). But trying to harness energy from lightning is nowhere near a new idea (remember that dude with the kite?), and its unsuitability for a large scale power source has been well known for ages.

[@tessat338]

As children, my sisters and I used to spend summer vacations with our grandparents in Florida. On stormy afternoons, we would sit on the covered porch and watch the lightening crack down from the sky and hit the local TV station's transmission tower. It could get quite eventful!

[@RC-nq7mg]

The only thing lightning power is good for is sending a de Lorean back to the future when you forget your plutonium.

[@Dick_Gozinya]

That's not actually true, lightning brought Dr. Frankenstein's monster to life!

[@alexsiemers7898]

Or for powering a factory to salvage tech from a dead alien civilization

[@doktormcnasty]

@@alexsiemers7898 Or for animating a corpse composed of the body parts from multiple dead people.

[@miguelrodriguezcimino1674]

Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening

[@Dick_Gozinya]

Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Galileo! Figaro!

[@myuu22]

Not the reference I was expecting, but a welcome one.

[@Dylanlamprecht]

About a week ago, lightning struck our house and destroyed our palasate motor, BOTH of our wifi routers, a Camera AND one monitor.

[@MaekarManastorm]

Owell no one cares

[@osiristhefallen8554]

@@MaekarManastorm ass

[@sp34277]

womp womp

[@KrystoferKlove]

​@@MaekarManastorm ew

[@kaitlynoddie9649]

and this is why you plug everything into power bars with surge protectors

[@TheWretchedOwl]

I have been asking this question for years! Thank you.

[@dadsfriendlyrobotcompany]

Why don't we just harvest the static electricity that builds up in the air that would eventually turn into a lightning strike. This would prevent us from trying to find exactly when and where lightning would strike and also what to do with that enormous amount of energy all at once

[@Dan0rioN]

I like your thinking!!

[@GamesFromSpace]

Because it still wouldn't add up to too much, relative to the gigantic area you would need. It would just be solar panels with extra steps and then only work a couple times per year.

[@GabrielPettier]

Yeah, it's only so brutal because it has to build up a lot of tension to then cross the air to the ground, if you catch it up higher, you can certainly get easier loads more often. But then again, it doesn't seem to be much energy either way, so probably not worth the trouble. On to my next project, harvesting the energy of tectonic plaques by using the slow but powerful motion appart at a continental rift!

[@andrewkepert923]

Or one step back from that - the energy stored in this electric field came from moving air. Surely it can’t be too hard to extract energy from that. 😉

[@CoPoint]

@@GabrielPettier Regarding the "Powering your house by tectonic plates": You're not the first with that idea - XKCD, for instance (who else 😉...) made a video about that (among other methods): kzbin.info/www/bejne/oGLXlKx7pJenh80 - your idea starts at 2:45, but the whole thing is worth the five minutes to watch 😁...

[@dziooooo]

Wait, 30kWh per house per DAY? I'm using under 120 per MONTH! Granted, in a small apartment, but I have some older appliances, a PS5, a gaming PC and I work from home! My family members who live in single family houses use around 300-400 kWh per month. 30 per day is absurd!

[@Swiftkitten88]

i mean it depends on the weather, last month was about 10kwH per day, but i agree 30 means a big house in the summer with ac on when its over 100

[@PoisonNuke]

We are a houshold of 4 people with everything (tumble dryer, dishwasher, two big freezers, a lot of tech and TVs and routers) and even we average at arount 6kWh per day. So yeah something is completely off here.

[@gabrielladias420]

Surely it's as easy as it was on my Factorio: Space Age playthrough on Fulgora!

[@MegaKotai]

I was looking for cracktorio references! Thank you!

[@gabrielladias420]

The average kWh stat is insane, though... My household (admittedly just me and my wife, in Brazil) uses about 6kWh on a hot summer month! A single lightning strike would do

[@xXbillymaysXx]

Can confirm, just gotta have a thousand accumulators and lightning rods placed everywhere :')

[@liz4v]

The amount of accumulators I need to do anything serious is ridiculous

[@alexsiemers7898]

Even in factorio lightning is tricky to capture if you don’t have enough accumulators to suck up all the energy.

[@Andrewtr6]

You forgot to mention nuclear power when talking about viable strategies.

[@Teh509]

You, are an incredible display of natures power.

[@luiserasmo]

5:30 enough for a 826 time travels in a DeLorean

[@alterbr33d]

8 kw/h per lightning strike. The average EV battery is around 80 kw/h. An EV car would need to get hit 10 times to charge its batteries for 300 miles of driving, and real time travel, if possible, probably would need so much more energy than that.

[@jssamp4442]

Odd, I come up with a different value. 1000 GW * 30 μs = 30 MW·s, that's 30 Megawatt·seconds. Not 30 Watt·seconds. Off by a factor of 10⁶. Roughly 8.33 KW·h. So you missed the Mega but got the right result.

[@rosanaguerrero2268]

Been waiting years for you guys to talk about Rayo del Catatumbo, I almost screamed out loud when el Lago de Maracaibo got mentioned 😭 As a Venezuelan who was born and raised in Maracaibo I grew up hearing the magnificence of this natural phenomenon and would love if you made an episode about it 🥺💛

[@moonshinewilly01]

According to my research, if your statement about lightning in LA and unicorns, there must be loads of unicorns in LA! There were approximately 1,200 cloud-to-ground lightning flashes over the nearly three decades between 1988 and 2017. That may not be many lightning strikes, it's a lot of unicorns tho!

[@christopherlenahan3906]

Glad to finally have a video on this, even knew about the Venezuelan lightning hot-spot. Thought it was feasible for the last decade. Never considered the watt-hour factor. Yeh, you get a whole lot of VA, but for milliseconds. Thanks!

[@Brown95P]

Even if it's not a reliable source on its own, the idea of turning lightningrods into extra sources of electricity still sounds very appealing to me.

[@scottmacs]

Love a shot of LA with snow-capped mountains in the background!

[@Nebbyn]

Why can't you use lightning for electricity? I see you haven't gotten to Fulgora yet.

[@UltraBrot]

The factory must grow

[@Ashalmawia]

hmm, I wonder if there is a recent game release that has inspired this topic?

[@WarttHog]

IT MUST GROW!

[@manuelgarcia3122]

Thanks @SciShow I live in maracaibo and always wondered why not, and now I know 👍

[@V0TION]

Fulgora disagrees

[@leviathan6326]

Why not set up a city wide lightning rod array, have them all meet at a heat sink, and use the power to boil water, turn a turbine, and it basically becomes another regular power plant. It should at least work in Venezuela. If nothing else it would be cool as heck.

[@ghyslainabel]

If we could collect all the lightnings hitting France in a year (including all the fields, forests and lakes), that would be enough to power the country for about 3 hours. If you use that electric energy to create heat to turn a turbine to create electricity, you may loose half of that power, in dissipated heat, reducing the yearly collect to 90 minutes of useful energy for the country.

[@kai4391]

Really interesting topic, great explanation.

[@kennystrawnmusic]

What might work is using the large-scale atmospheric electrical fields *behind* lightning as a source of power, since doing that is as easy as creating an artificial circuit to replace the natural circuit that lightning would otherwise create for itself - which is in turn as easy as just launching 2 cable-tethered balloons up into the air to 2 different altitudes (one tethered balloon to 40000ft and another to 5000ft, for example) and using a miles-long wire to connect them. That might in turn actually prevent the charges from building up enough to become lightning strikes to begin with because they'd have a continuous path to flow through that we created for them. Wiring up a thunderstorm like this in a way that uses atmospheric charge separation as a source of power would also allow us to produce green hydrogen much less expensively, since, well, there's also a lot of water in those storm clouds that can be easily split by electrolysis. That hydrogen could then go on to fill gaps between storms by being pumped through grid-scale fuel cells.

[@dtibor5903]

If you do a basic unit conversion, you get about 280kWh energy per strike on average. Enough for a house 1-2 months. Not worth the hassle

[@Anthaliel]

We clearly need a Stargate Atlantis Zero Point Module.

[@cassandrachristine]

you just need to use enough accumulators like on fulgora

[@videakias3000]

the title of the video is mildly misleading. I thought that the video was going to say that utilizing lighting is practically impossible. instead of that the video is about why we aren't utilizing lighting as whole as a renewable energy source.

[@WDIO-RADIO]

Electro-spun carbon nano-tube mats rolled onto glidcop. Highest thermal and electrical conductivity. Highest surface area, can trap and be bound to rare earths, can be made into highest energy density capacitors. Top shelf tech.

[@levnzt6949]

!?wait what?! how can you convert 30 wattseconds (per strike) to 8 kilowatthours (per strike)? that doesn't make any sense at all

[@oliviervancantfort5327]

Yep that doesn't make sense! There is another name for the watt-second. It is called a Joule. Actually, the calculation gives 30 megawatts-seconds (or megaJoules) which is effectively about 8kWh. What happened to the billions of joules from the beginning of the video which are now reduced by two orders of magnitude, I have no idea at all...

[@unadomandaperte]

The idea is correct. The challenge is simply in building it. Think Franklin's kite. It didn't really need to get struck by lightning for it to collect charges from the air.

[@EmilyJelassi]

I really appreciate you dumbing down the maths as much as possible for this!! If only this was actually possible and easier to do... sounds like if we could figure it out better, it might work in the future, especially if we're going to get more storms along with climate change...

[@Aelfraed26]

In Factorio now you can

[@robertwheeler8994]

Lightning is always around us. Tame it with gravity and it can be directed.

[@whitcwa]

Building a 10MV capacitor which can store 30MWs would require something like 100 square meters of thick copper for each plate. The cost makes it prohibitive.

[@chabis]

So static electricity does not do the trick. Enough to destroy devices, not enough to run them.

[@LogicalThinking-p2s]

The bottle capable of capturing lightning is called a Laden Jar

[@whitcwa]

Leyden jar

[@AaronGeo]

Xkcd's What If?, anyone?

[@jonas1340]

Now imagine for a second if every home's electricity delivery method would be a lightning strike ^^

[@spockfan2000]

Great Scott! 1.21 "Jiga" watts!

[@freddiereadie30]

Because lightning strikes on the same spot don't happen every day, and cloud seeding is not a guarantee to produce lightning, they figured the arithmetic and found out that it could take 120 years before you break even on the investment cost to build such a lightning power plant. Other sources of energy would be more economical.

[@JeremyEllwood]

5:25 is the power law. Not ohm's law.

[@fwootamala]

If we're asking this question, can you next explain why we can't use gunpowder to heat our homes?

[@gordol66]

5:28 Just enough to power a Delorean's Flux Capacitor.

[@Red81849]

why would it have to be one capasiter and not a bunch of smaller ones?

[@OneWingedRose]

Aw, that was a bummer ending. Still, sounds like it wouldn't be a bad support system, have one of them running in the background (in a place that gets lightning a lot) in addition to the main power generators yeah?

[@capsith]

The design, overall, is cool for the lightning rod and capacitors. Now, if it was possible to not rely on nature (open space) have that evaporation in a controlled environment (closed space) then it might be reasonable to get more then one strike a day. The next question could be to know how big the environment (wave guide) would have to be and how much climate control is required. Thanks for the video.

[@ono3869]

Ohm's Law: Lightning bolt = 1,000 gigawatts Emmett Brown's Law: Lightning bolt = 1.21 gigawatts

[@brettbarager9101]

"How cool lightening is . . . " That's a hot topic!😂

[@gregmiller9710]

Thanks!

[@fortyfukinseven]

Duration would be my guess. Storing that power so quickly sounds like a ridiculous effort

[@attheratehandle]

The short answer: Lightning is a lot of power for not that much energy. Ideally you can now go and attempt to read what those terms mean rather than watch a video that gives you an explanation you will forgot by tomorrow.

[@FullWhateveer]

One of my childhoods questions answered 😊

[@Treblaine]

"Billions... with a B." One point twenty-one gigawatts!

[@erfquake1]

There's an art installation in New Mexico that gets struck by lightning as part of its modus-arterandi, and I think it occurs frequently. It's a very large area in the desert with lots of metal spikes coming out of the ground. Could this be a practical source for lightning strike collection?

[@macsnafu]

Well, I kind of figured that capturing lightning for electricity would have some problems, or we'd already be doing it, even if only on a small scale. But I didn't realize the extent of those problems.

[@SharpnessSword]

I collect lightning to make charged creepers

[@TheStickCollector]

Probably too uncontrollable unless we invent/improve equipment for harvesting it.

[@curiouswidget5171]

Perhaps a video on Nikola Tesla's "wireless electricity" is next?

[@LogicalThinking-p2s]

Bottle capable of capturing lightning is called a Laden Jar . Videos hear on KZbin on how to make them

[@chesthoIe]

I mean is it actually though? C'mon.

[@whitcwa]

Leyden jar.

[@DiscipleOfHeavyMeta1]

God willing, we shall one day.

[@MaekarManastorm]

No nsuch thing

[@DiscipleOfHeavyMeta1]

@MaekarManastorm What? God? It's a figure of speech, get over it.

[@alterbr33d]

8 kw/h per lightning strike. You'd only have to get hit by lightning in your car over 10 times a day to charge charge your EV, for it to drive 300 miles a day and that's assuming your lightning flux capacitor is 100% efficient.

[@jetzeschaafsma1211]

So could we then draw power before the bolt strikes? Use the potential between high and low regions of the cloud?

[@bkucenski]

The real problem is that lightening never strikes the same place twice so you'd have to have a mobile storage system.

[@MeepMeep88]

Because we'd have Frankensteins EVERYWHERE duhhh

[@agranero6]

Well the region near Maracaibo lake has the highest concentration of lightning in the world...every day thousands of lightnings. Positive lightnings are much less frequent so this is not a real problem too.

[@Lightningchase1973]

Using a lightning by catching it, would by like making hydripower by holding a mill wheel into the lower end of a flowing rapid. 99,9 % of the energy is spread into glowing light, heated air and thunder. Ou would need to cat h the charge in the cloud, using the permanent charge built up ground - cloud. That would give useful energy. And obviously at even higher costs.

[@MKdGlu]

I think it's possible but we might not have the infrastructure to make it possible. The problem is why we try to harness it when it strikes when you can do it before it strikes or even prevent it.

[@elmurcis1]

Melting stuff with lightning can be more "mechanical" and doable. Imagine having Solar power plant (not panels but mirrors) that melts salts in tower (like we see in many projects) combined with many spikes near by that literally just adds extra heat to system from every strike. Wouldn't be enough to melt ex heart but could work for frozen chicken!

[@zavi3rz]

So my takeaway is, even if we can achieve 100% lightning to energy conversion rate, and manage to capture every single lightning strikes in the world, we still couldn’t even power up a single country, let alone the whole world, so it’s essentially useless as an energy source. Am I understanding this right?

[@LeftGuard]

30kWh per day for an average house?! Mine uses ~55kWh per WEEK!

[@Kevin_Street]

So Doc Brown was wrong about using lightning to power the DeLorean? Lighting would give him a thousand times the 1.21 Gigawatts he needed, but only for a brief moment of time? Jeepers.

[@deldarel]

Only one gigawatt? That's not even enough for a time machine, but close

[@ianhall7513]

So, if wind, hydro, geothermal energy is established as the primary energy source, lightning strike plants would be one of those "nice if it happened, but don't rely on it" type of deals.

[@GenderFluidDragonKing]

The only time it seems like lightning power would be efficient enough would be if we were on like an exoplanet that has an extremely thick atmosphere constantly producing lightning

[@alexsiemers7898]

Would this planet happen to have oceans of oil and alien ruins to salvage for materials?

[@krrez]

What no. Mica is a dielectric and Ohm's law equals voltage, not power, to the current times the resistance. Dielectrics and insulators are not the same thing. Power and voltage are not interchangeable.

[@DragonLandlord]

Could it be done for the home, like solar panels if prive wind turbines?

[@markphc99]

I didn’t know they could be positive or negative!

[@nisper5396]

No disrespect, but your calculations are questionable… and even if all you said was correct, just because currently capturing and storing lightning as potencial energy is inefficient doesn’t mean it always will be so. If that was true we wouldn’t have electric cars. 20 years ago they were a joke, now technology advanced enough that they are a reality. I find it silly to shut down the possibility of free energy from a natural phenomenon just because we don’t know how to do it efficiently right now, don’t you? I felt like this video was a little biased. A little too quick to dismiss this idea. Just letting you know how it came across to me is all. Please don’t take offense. Take care y’all.

[@illesizs]

How about sticking a huge metal pole up into the sky, to scrape all that potential charge before it becomes lightning?

[@stephengibbs8342]

thanks for enlightening us (pun intended)

[@ScaerieTale]

ONE POINT TWENTY-ONE JIGA-WATTS! ... Sorry 💜⚡

[@hombredeflorida3064]

1000 gigawatts of electricity per lightning strike could power a time machine 826.446281 times

[@fegolem]

...less flashy... That's the one I lol'd on.

[@eleklink8406]

we should use lightning for aluminium oxide electrolysis

[@DanH-u3f]

This is what Tesla had theorized. He wanted massive lightning rods built to harness the electricity, the problem was how to store it.

[@alterbr33d]

Lightning produces 8 kw/h of electricity. A Tesla would need to get hit over 10 times by lightning to charge its batteries if it had a lightning flux capacitor.

[@Pingviinimursu]

​@@alterbr33d They were talking about Nikola Tesla, the scientist. Nothing to do with the car brand.

[@doktormcnasty]

@@Pingviinimursu So what now they're making up scientist names based on an EV company? What's next a scientist named after Einsteinium or something?

[@iggyrlk]

What about a large blanket like thing flying behind an airplane. Catch it before it becomes a strike and use it for propellers. The benjamin franklin experiment.

[@PrefaceofDysphoria]

I was about to type giant capacitors right at the same time the video did xD

[@MichaelWalker-hh2xp]

Lightning is random, our star puts out enough energy in one parking stall to power three ovens .. that's helping power those T-storms and blink of the eye flashes. 💤⚡ Even at night!

[@55squire]

Lightning. rod.

[@MichaelWalker-hh2xp]

blink an eye as a storm chaser

[@ashtonmiller-z1n]

its simple realy we need a huge faraday cage but we simply need very huge amonut of ac and dc power converters and inverters and very huge rechargable battery and capstor banks with alot of grounding to get rid of the extra power if it can't store all of it at the time .

[@ashtonmiller-z1n]

plus a nuclear reactor both fission and fusion would just be far far far far far far better. plus high level nuclear waste is actaly 97% fully recycleble for all the fuel use so once you mine the stuff you can keep useing the stuf with reprocesing like for a very very very very very long time. that bacly means very little mineing needed compared to the shear amonut of nuclear fuel and energy you can get out of it. also makes some of the best rare eaerth metals like zecioum-90 from strouim decay passvly from the srtouim waste after 30 years by the way. also struim also makes a very good rtg and nuclear strling pasive mostly mantice free power sorce for long term waste stroage that could turn yuca monution in nevida into a very huge rtg powerplant that could also make huge amonut of zecuiom 90 for power plant and aerospace terbines that could be made out of pure zicuiom-90 due to how much zecuiom 90 you just get from high level nuclear waste sreuiom decay every three decades bacly. that could make a huge difreasce in hleping masvly cut costs for futre nuclaer powerplants and aerospace nucleaer thermal reactor and rocket engines that all use alot of zecuom 90 for all thsoe terbines. witch by the way you can get more by just sueing nuclear power in far more quantys then you would be able to ever natruly mine of the the gronud of earth a hundir thaosund fold over by the way. if only nuclear fuel and nucler waste reproceing wasn't illegal in the usa due to very bad long term oversight of trying to stop nuclear ewapon profiation ended up back fireing bescue apretly nuclear reproceing is actly a man nesacty for long term lagre scale nuclear powerplant infertecure use.

[@joyceschmidt7372]

I already know the answer to this question but I just... Need something else right now

[@Physicus9]

What are those glasses btw?