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Old 06-27-2018, 12:24 PM   #2168 (permalink)
sendler
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An average bolt of lightning, striking from cloud to ground, contains roughly one billion (1,000,000,000) joules of energy. This is no small amount, enough to power a 60-watt lightbulb for six months plus a forgotten open door refrigerator for a day. In the forms of electricity, light, heat and thunder, this energy is all released by the flash in a matter of milli- or even microseconds. From here let's consider the practical potential of lightning is as a power source.

The average American household (with its 2.59 inhabitants) consumes 41 billion (4.14*10^10) joules each year. If your house ran on lightning alone, it would have to be struck more than 40 times per year! There are 114 million (1.14*10^8) households in America. Multiply these two numbers, and you have 4.72*10^18 joules of energy per year. Every lightning bolt on Earth in one year, captured perfectly with no loss of energy, would contain about 4*10^17 joules of energy. Thus, all the lightning in the entire world could only power 8% of US households. At best
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https://www.realclearscience.com/blo...gy-source.html
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