Can we harness the power of lightning

A typical lightning strike contains 5 billion joules or 1400 kilowatt-hours of energy1.  This is more than enough energy to power a house for a month or send a time traveling DeLorean back to 1985.  Unfortunately there are a number of big problems with practically putting this energy on the grid the greatest of which is the insignificant amount of energy actually available compared to the large cost to capture it.
 
To capture all of this lightning we would need to construct Eiffel Tower size structures every square mile covering the whole 200 million square mile earth, even floating one’s for the oceans.  Even if you decided to focus on key lightning areas the amount of towers would be mind boggling.  Each tower would need a transformer, super conductor and other expensive equipment.  They would need to be connected together with high voltage transmission lines and an army to maintain the system.  Energy storage technology and super capacitors would need to be invented which could handle the 30 millisecond surge of 5 billion joules.  An entire system would be necessary to convert it to AC power, equalize current and voltage and maintain power quality.  Sometimes lightning is negatively charged and sometimes it is positively charged.  A system would have to be developed to make sure that strikes don’t cancel themselves out2.  Efficiency would also be lost in all of the conversions, transformations, storage and transportations of each strike.   Much of the power in a strike is lost before it even hits the ground when it is converted into heat and light.   The energy instantly heats the surrounding air to 50,000°F, 5 times greater than the surface of the sun, and produces a shock wave known as thunder.  The estimated 350 million lightning ground strikes around the world per year account for 490,000,000,000kWh’s of energy.  But in 2015 the world used 40 times this amount: 20,000,000,000,000 kWh’s of energy3.  Therefor all of the hypothetical harnessable land strikes, if every strike on earth is harnessed with 100% efficiency, would only power the world for 9 days.
 
On the bright side there are much easier ways of harnessing natural energy.   For example, the amount of energy we get from one hour of the sun hitting the earth can cover all of our power needs on earth for a year.  Working out the solar energy challenges seems to be a more efficient use of time.
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