Why can't we harness lightning energy?

3. In 2009, the world used around 20,279,640,000,000kWh – over 40 times the electrical energy that all the hypothetically harness-able land strikes contain. So, basically, all the lightning we can capture will give the world enough electricity for only nine days! But there is more. read more

Thunder is the sound caused by lightning. When a lightning bolt travels from the cloud to the ground it creates a hole in the air - a channel. read more

“Just because we don’t harness lightning now doesn’t mean some smart engineer out there won’t someday figure out how to do it,” he says. But even at 1 million joules, the typical lightning strike contains only about ¼ of a kilowatt-hour of power, which is not enough to make much difference on our electric bill. read more