[Assam] Meghalaya -clouds Land - power generation: from Lightning

[umesh sharma]

Meghalaya has high mountains where it rains more than anywhere   else in the world -- ideal for power generation by sticking lightning poles among low hung clouds

Umesh
PS: was reviewing lightning theory for high school students at http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssci/phys/Class/estatics/u8l4e.html

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http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Lightning_20Power_20Plant
Problem with lightning is the speed that it happens. So much energy in a tiny amount of time....it just fries/melts/destroys whatever tries to conduct it. Think of it this way: normal power sources is like taking a sip of water from a garden hose...lightning power supply is like trying to take a sip of water from Niagra falls. But I have heard an idea of how to defeat the overwhelming blast of energy... Say you had a huge PVC pipe or something that you could channel all of Niagra falls into (use your imagination..)...now reduce the overwhelming blast of water by dividing the water into 100 smaller pipes from the main one. And then 100 pipes on each of those. (that crazy octopus comes to mind..) Eventually, when you take one pipe, it will have the pressure of the garden hose, and not all of the falls. So take this idea and substitute niagra falls for lightning, pipes for conductive material, and water for electricity. But when you build all this stuff, you need to think
 about the economics of doing so and I think THAt is precisely why we haven't done it yet.
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blaah,         Sep 23 2001
          
                  I confess to giving this notion some serious thought a fair number of years ago. I concluded that if you really want to collect lightning energy, you need to go to the clouds, because more than 90% of all strikes are cloud-to-cloud.      
              Obviously, you also need a special vehicle. I chose a dirigible design. NOT to be inflated with hydrogen, of course! In fact, I considered vacuum-balloon technology, and spent some time looking for a suitable material from which to construct vacuum balloons. (More on that elsewhere on the Halfbakery.)

Umesh Sharma

Washington D.C. 

1-202-215-4328 [Cell]

Ed.M. - International Education Policy
Harvard Graduate School of Education,
Harvard University,
Class of 2005

http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/index.html (Edu info)

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/ (Management Info)




www.gse.harvard.edu/iep  (where the above 2 are used )
http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/



http://jaipurschool.bihu.in/
       
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