TAPPING
ATMOSPHERIC CHARGE - POWER FROM CLOUDS
(This article
is the property of Robert E. Bruhns, and may be freely copied, if credit
is given, but it may not be not plagiarized or sold by third parties.)
For years now, I have been meaning to try something with those
chimney-brush dandelion lightning protector thingies. I won't do an
experiment like this in a neighborhood, because of the danger. I think
maybe some back-woods location would be better.
W2WLR George said that some experimenter had seen about 2 amperes of
corona
discharge current in their downlead from those chimney brushes as a
storm went overhead. Because of the enormous voltages present in the
clouds, I figure that the corona current will not be very much affected
by any reasonable voltage that the ground lead goes to. If that is
correct, then a great deal of power could be collected from such clouds
passing overhead - say, two amps at 10,000 VDC, or maybe 200,000 VDC, etc.
The trick would be to convert from DC to AC efficiently and reliably.
LIGHTNING
STRIKES AGAIN
George Bonadio, W2WLR
AM Press/Exchange, Issue 114, February, 1995
"One experimenter, with new brushes on the top of his broadcasting
tower took his opportunity. (He must have been a ham.) His tower was
free after midnight and a storm was approaching. He wired in a DC meter
in series with the tower to the ground. The storm came.
He claimed that his meter read about two A for
about ten minutes of the peak of the storm."
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