Can cloud charge imbalance be used as an energy source? First
off quite some energy must be present in clouds: a lightning
path is quite long, and electrical breakdown of air requires
about 1MV/m. Most (many, smaller) electric discharges are not
seen because they occur within clouds. The electric energy built
up can also be lost in other ways (i.e. Lorentz force). Some of
it comes to ground and when it happens it has such large peak
power (on average about a trillion watts) that it can not
efficiently be harvested. I assume that charges build up quite
continuously during the lifetime of a cloud: if we knew what
cloud to select for discharge we could control (by selecting the
right cloud or part of a cloud) the power flux, though not easy
its hard to rule out as impossible. Now how exactly do I propose
to do this? Air can be made conducting through bruteforce
electrical breakdown (not efficient), or by heating it (not
efficient) or by an energy form encouraging with higher
specificity the ionization of specifi