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Imagine it were possible to scale this up and somehow harness the full lightning energy of a thunderstorm. Say 1 strike per second with each bolt representing 10^9 joules. Then that is a measly 1 GW peak, only available in certain places at specific times of day and parts of the year, not including losses and inefficiencies .

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> harness the full lightning energy of a thunderstorm

As in, walk into every chapel and install a device that works with the apparatus for 'catching' strikes? Not sure what they're called, but I know it's tradition of having a chapel higher than all other buildings which is used to capture potential strikes and earth the current through the ground.

That's called a lightning rod.

Globally you only get ~100 strikes per second, which means any location is going to be much lower than that.

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