P6 6 The Power of the Forks: Harnessing Lightning Power
Alex Toohie, Joe McGuire, Alexandra Pohl · Physics Special Topics · 2013
The power of lightning and the fraction of that which is available to us is explored in this paper. We find that exploiting Joule heating we can harness 7.5x10^4J of energy per lightning strike, and by using a bank of capacitors we can harness up to 2.5x10^5J. The total power available by these methods in every strike that occurs on Earth is 11.25MW, six orders of magnitude less than the Earth's power consumption.