Origin of Lightning and How It Can Be Used Safely

One of the earliest fears we get in life is the fear of lightning. Though it lessens considerably as we grow older, most people end up knowing very little about this phenomenon of nature. Forget the myths and the information gray areas, put your thinking caps on, open your mind and lets find out what lighting really is and whether it is something we can use to our benefit.

Lightning is a huge electrostatic discharge between charged regions within clouds or between clouds and the earth surface. The lightning flash that is seen during a strike occurs when the charged regions in the atmosphere try to equalize themselves back to normal. It is classified into three categories or types, notably, from a cloud to itself, from a cloud to another and between a cloud and the ground.

If we look closely and in detail, this is how lightning gets started; within the clouds there are tiny ice crystals and because they are in constant motion they keep bumping against each other and against larger ice pellets. This rubbing together of two ice types creates electricity and as the electrical difference between the cloud and the surrounding increases, a strike occurs and it explodes to the ground, thus a lightning. Well maybe as a child you had genuine reason to fear because the path that the lightning energy passes through as it moves to the ground is three times hotter than the surface of the sun.

What most people do not know is that lightning can be harnessed and used as a source for alternative energy. A single lightning strike has approximately five billion joules of energy, this is enough power to last a medium household for a month. Since the 1980's there has been numerous attempts to harvest lightning energy, several related proposals have been put forth ranging from using the contained energy to generate hydrogen from water to harnessing the lightning energy by allowing it to heat water and even capturing the energy using properly spaced inductors.

So far, the best tested method for capturing lightning energy was demonstrated in 2007 by Alternate Energy Holdings, an alternative energy company in the USA. The method, originally developed by an inventor known as Leroy Steve, involved the use of a tower, a means to trapping the larger potion of the incoming energy and a capacitor to store the rest. Though the larger scale of this experiment did not produce the expected results, smaller experiments including those conducted by Leroy showed promise. For example, he was able to power a 60 watt for about twenty minutes using the energy from a small bolt of artificial lighting.

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