Lightning Farms

Alternative Energy: When Lightning Strikes

We've all witnessed the raw power Mother Nature can produce during a summer shower....Now, Alternative Energy Holdings plans to be the first company to tap into the natural energy produced by a thunderstorm. The company says it has successfully developed a prototype which can collect power from the ground area surrounding a strike. This power can then be converted into electricity and sold through existing power grids. In 2007, during the peak lighting months of July and August, the company plans to test a mobile full-scale lightning farm. On average, a lighting bolt carries one million kilowatts of electrical energy. When a significant amount of each strike is harvested over a period of four to seven years, the company says, a lightning farm could produce and sell electricity at $0.005 per kilowatt hour. This price, substantially lower than current market value, also comes without the environmental consequences most energy sources carry.
_____

I would rather see Alternative Energy Holdings putting their money and energy into these sorts of things - I'm afraid that they will use money investors would want to see invested in this - into their nuclear power plants. Which don't seem like the kind of thing that private business has any business being responsible for, anyway.