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submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months 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 10 months 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.

[-] soumerd_retardataire@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I double-checked and you're entirely right, i didn't know that, i've heard many years ago that a single big lightning strike could power a large city for months(, while it's indeed more a matter of minutes, if not less), and thought that it was a technological problem(, and that, e.g., flying devices anchored on the ground to either a portable infrastructure or a nationwide-extended network, could potentially make up for the unreliability and follow the storms, or even perhaps cause them one day).
Now i understand even better why solar power is preferred, thanks !

[-] Technoguyfication@lemmy.ml 3 points 10 months ago

A single lightning strike could power a large city for a few milliseconds. Not even seconds or minutes. Definitely not months.

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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
10 points (57.4% liked)

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