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I think someone could build an innovative electrical power plant using this technology at Relampago del Catatumbo (Venezuela's everlasting lightning storm): https://www.atlasobscura.com/videos/see-venezuela-s-everlast...

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Lightning does not actually transmit that much energy. Primarily because it's so brief.

This was my first thought while reading the article - surely if we can intentionally get hit by lightning, we can find a way to harness that energy.

https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/is-there-... discusses the idea a bit. TLDR is: it probably isn't worth it :/

An electrolaser is designed to briefly pulse a high power beam that creates a conductive plasma channel (atmospheric conduit). If natural lightening is being coaxed, then we are essentially redirecting natural electrostatic balance into some focused work (Wardenclyffe?).

The only "capacitor" I know of large enough to handle this amount of instant power is the one used to "spark" JET tokamak fusion [1]. There are two 775 ton flywheels that can dispense over 3 GJ instantly and "charge" via grid feed rate of around 8MW.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus

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