Discussion»Statements»Rosie's Corner» Windmills collect energy from the wind, right? Solar panels collect energy from the sun. Could we harness enegy from other sources?
No. They are too random (size, strength, and location), therefore making it impossible to set up "facilities" to capture he energy (if it were even feasible).
We're currently using these other sources of energy -
Tidal - energy from ocean waves. (Wave power). Geothermal - energy from inside the internal heat of the earth Biomass - energy form burning organic materials (slash and such) Cogeneration - energy from the creation of electricity (recovered waste heat)
So we do have multiple sources going on constantly then Shuhak? here comes another doozy question. How much energy is there in lightning? Is there anything there we can capture? I'm going to post this question and then GOOGLE it. Thank you for your helpfully informative reply. I appreciate it bigly! :)
An average lighting bolt contains 1 billion joules! That's enough power to s kep a 60-watt lightbulb going for for six months straight - plus a forgotten open door refrigerator for a day! The US gets roughly 30 billion bolts a year. Even if we could harness all that energy, it's only enough to power 0.6% homes. Then comes the physics problem.
All of lightning's energy is transferred in tiny fractions of a second. This means we must have an incredibly large battery (or capacitor) that can charge up instantly when the lightning strikes, then slowly and steadily let out the bottled up power when asked. Devices with these capabilities are both difficult to produce and very inefficient. Physics tells us that we can't store and retrieve this energy with 100% efficiency. In fact, we lose the majority of the energy we are converting in nearly every process. Combine the limited total energy and the difficulty and loss in accessing it, we can barely create a tiny fraction of a percent of the power that we use every day from atmospheric lightning. In other words, it's utterly unfeasible to use lightning as a source of power.
Once again thank you for educating me about that Shuhak. I enjoy learning about things as you know by now but sometimes learning leads to disappointment. Of course that is NOT THE FAULT of the person who does teaching as it were. I remember when I was a kid we used to have what they called "electrical" storms. Lightning cracking through the sky...thunder roaring right after. But no rain. At least not where we were. Maybe somewhere it rained but not where we were. It was beautiful and noisy and frightening all at once. All that energy...momentarily! Well maybe one day we will find other sources that haven't been discovered yet. Lots of people are windbags. Maybe we can harness them? Thank you for your reply Shuhak and Happy Monday to thee and thine.!
Hydro power - Water was first diverted from the Canadian side of the Niagara River for generating electricity in 1893. ... Today the churning river provides the driving force for almost 2 million kilowatts of electricity from a number of power plants on the Canadian side.
However, with water sources drying up in the west, that would probably not be feasible with climate changing as rapidly as it is.
I saw an interesting program yeserday L. We can harness water from the atmosphere via solar panels or something. Each panel can harness 5 litres of water per day. On the show it was stated that there is more water in our atmosphere than in all the rivers of the world. I haven't GOOGLED it yet but I will. Thank you for your reply! :)
I wonder what the world will be in one hundred years? How many things will we take for granted then that we deemed to be impossible today? I shall ask. Thank you for your reply L! :)
Shuhak 