Electrical conceptualization

[Tumbleweed]

What I find fascinating about some electricity is that it comes right out of the ground. You merely create a shortage of electrons above ground somewhere, provide a circuit or conduit, and voila an endless stream of electrons just can't wait to pop out of the ground for you to use. 1/120th of second later on an AC generator circuit the reverse is true and the electrons pop back into the ground. I assume the electrons are coming from the outer shells of metals, and molecules containing them.
So lightning would work the same way: a deficiency of electrons way up in the air due to whatever and out pops the electrons from the ground to fill the void. And since there then may be an excess of electrons way up in the air a reverse strike occurs. Of course not all electricity goes to or from ground or even "needs" a ground, such as in cloud to cloud lightning strikes. Just a deficiency or excess from one place than another and a facilitating path for the electrons to follow to get there.
Now man uses magnetism to create those deficiencies/ excesses for the most part, at least as far as our power grid goes. Lightning apparently does not make use of magnetism. Isn't friction the driving force for the excess/deficiency of electrons? Could whatever causes the excess/deficiency be harnessed in some useful way? Or could lightning be attracted to a "rod" or area and then stored somehow? How many kilowatts could you get from a lightning bolt, assuming 100 % efficiency

[Tumbleweed]

On another note, what was it about Tesla's idea to use the Earth as a conductor to transport electricity instead of wires that caused it to be abandoned? Was it because you had no control over where the amps would pop out if you took a megawatt generator and just stuck the positive lead to ground? Is that in essence what he was trying to do?

[Tumbleweed]

Well well well I went agoogling and found out a few things about friction generators and that Tesla himself was interested in them.Obviously they never caught on for use in power plants But what about one for home use. Would that be practical or economical? Or would Junior have to ride a treadmill every night after school to pay for his keep?
And did old Ben Franklin himself get the idea that lightning was caused by friction due to the various and sundry friction generators being used in labs during the late 1700s?

[trvlr2]

On another note, what was it about Tesla's idea to use the Earth as a conductor to transport electricity instead of wires that caused it to be abandoned? Was it because you had no control over where the amps would pop out if you took a megawatt generator and just stuck the positive lead to ground? Is that in essence what he was trying to do?

I am not sure about Tesla using that method. But, I can tell you that Telcos used a "ring to ground" to provide individual rings to party line subscribers.
A 110V current was imposed on one or the other legs of the talk circuit. At the subscriber's home, the ringer was wired to the proper side of the line, and ground. A good ground. The A/C current was 16,24,36,54,and 66 cycles(Memory?), allowed the ringer to function, depending on how the number was wired in the CO. Ringers with proper windings and capacitors with proper values allowed the selected number to ring, without disturbing others on the party line. Without this distinction, party line subscribers had to listen for a 'code ring', all phones ringing at the same time.
Back to your question, any insulated wire strung out over a distance will develop a voltage with respect to ground(earth). Yes, you could use this to do something useful. Keeping lightning out of it, may be something else.
Somewhere here, there is a poster with a good explanation of all this.
I will wait with you.:)

[jasonpatterson]

Isn't friction the driving force for the excess/deficiency of electrons? Could whatever causes the excess/deficiency be harnessed in some useful way? Or could lightning be attracted to a "rod" or area and then stored somehow? How many kilowatts could you get from a lightning bolt, assuming 100 % efficiency


It turns out that lightning is rather poorly understood for such a common, highly visible phenomenon. The charge separation is caused by friction, as you mention, but harnessing it in a useful way would be a neat trick. You could certainly attract lightning to a particular location (the Empire State Building tower comes to mind as a frequently struck location. Unfortunately lightning strikes a location like this too rarely to be of much use for power. If we assumed 100% efficiency and if wikipedia is right about the amount of energy in a bolt:

500,000,000 joules of energy in one bolt
500,000,000 J/3600s = 139,000 watts for a 1 hour period
139,000 watts for 1 hour = 139 kilowatt hours of power
Electrical power costs about $0.10 per kWh (very roughly, and rounding up), so that's about $14 worth of electricity per lightning strike.

[edd]

[SIZE=2]What I find fascinating about some electricity is that it comes right out of the ground. You merely create a shortage of electrons above ground somewhere, provide a circuit or conduit, and voila an endless stream of electrons just can't wait to pop out of the ground for you to use. 1/120th of second later on an AC generator circuit the reverse is true and the electrons pop back into the ground. I assume the electrons are coming from the outer shells of metals, and molecules containing them.

Conduction for a metal happens thanks to electrons that are not in an outer shell of a particular atom but are shared in a sea over all the atoms n that bit of metal. And the metal atoms aren't organised into molecules but are collectively bonded by this sea. Google 'metallic bonding'.

[Toke]

On another note, what was it about Tesla's idea to use the Earth as a conductor to transport electricity instead of wires that caused it to be abandoned? Was it because you had no control over where the amps would pop out if you took a megawatt generator and just stuck the positive lead to ground? Is that in essence what he was trying to do?
I am not sure what Tesla was up to, but there are DC power lines from Denmark to Norway and Sweden with one conductor and return through the earth/sea.

[Tumbleweed]

It turns out that lightning is rather poorly understood for such a common, highly visible phenomenon. The charge separation is caused by friction, as you mention, but harnessing it in a useful way would be a neat trick. You could certainly attract lightning to a particular location (the Empire State Building tower comes to mind as a frequently struck location. Unfortunately lightning strikes a location like this too rarely to be of much use for power. If we assumed 100% efficiency and if wikipedia is right about the amount of energy in a bolt:

500,000,000 joules of energy in one bolt
500,000,000 J/3600s = 139,000 watts for a 1 hour period
139,000 watts for 1 hour = 139 kilowatt hours of power
Electrical power costs about $0.10 per kWh (very roughly, and rounding up), so that's about $14 worth of electricity per lightning strike.
yes I did some research and it just isn't worth harnessing lightning bolts. I was thinking of attracting them rather than just waiting around for them to happen, but why bother if it isn't economical. Friction generators on the other hand like those radios you just wind up to charge them are interesting, but unless you can make use of gravity like a water wheel, more will go in than comes out. But if you hooked up all the bikes and stair masters to friction generators at an exercise gym, the proprietor might get his energy needs for free. You charge the "hamsters" for using your friction generators and get them to make power for you too! Or maybe you could give them kilowatt discounts. As Ben said a penny saved, etc

[Tumbleweed]

I am not sure what Tesla was up to, but there are DC power lines from Denmark to Norway and Sweden with one conductor and return through the earth/sea.
Well, that is pretty much the same as farm out buildings. They just used one wire for "hot" and literal ground replaced the neutral line. Not used today because it creates a bigger shock potential hazard. That was half the battle. But I think Tesla was thinking of transporting large amounts of power by doing basically what a welder does.: just stick the hot line to ground and 60 amps turns the metal into a red hot resistor. He wanted to avoid the voltage drop that occurs in transmission lines. When he invented AC that helped a lot. I guess Edison's DC voltage drop was much higher still and was the impetus behind inventing AC. But the idea was if you made a Super Welder and put, say, 10 megawatts to ground. the Earth could only hold so many electrons and what you pumped in had to come out, no hot line transmission needed and no voltage drop (and hence less current available). And I think the problem was where would they pop out reliably? But his is all conjecture on my part

[Toke]

The basic problem with that idea is that there are no circuit.
You can lay one wire to ground and the other in a cable to get a circuit over at your consumers ground connection.
If you stick both in the ground you get a short.

The 10MW generator is not producing anything before the cables are connected to something using the power.

[BillC]

(Too many questions)

The voltage regulation provided by single-wire earth returns is usually poor, rendering them unsuitable for many applications.

Your idea for a lineless transmission won't work, unfortunately. The Earth is regarded as an infinite supply of electrons (and an equally infinite supply of positive charge) and can hold as many electrons as you choose to inject into it.

[Tumbleweed]

(Too many questions)

The voltage regulation provided by single-wire earth returns is usually poor, rendering them unsuitable for many applications.

Your idea for a lineless transmission won't work, unfortunately. The Earth is regarded as an infinite supply of electrons (and an equally infinite supply of positive charge) and can hold as many electrons as you choose to inject into it.
Okay I could have said a surplus of electrons is injected that could be "harvested" or more easily drawn out of the earth on another part of the globe, and not what pops in must pop out. Also assuming you are creating electron flow without drawing them out of the earth to begin with (using potential difference to literal ground and a circuit) and just putting them right back in. The guy had something in mind using the earth as a hot conductor instead of transmission line. Haven't been able to find any references and was hoping to find a link here. Maybe I got it all wrong?

[Tumbleweed]

The basic problem with that idea is that there are no circuit.
You can lay one wire to ground and the other in a cable to get a circuit over at your consumers ground connection.
If you stick both in the ground you get a short.

The 10MW generator is not producing anything before the cables are connected to something using the power.
Well more specifically you get a short to ground. If you didn't have a circuit breaker, it would just go on pumping amps into the earth, probably melting your wires in the process if they weren't big enough, and you would have a big big power bill
And yes, no current is being drawn until you hook up a load ( resistance) via a circuit (wiring). But in this case the earth would be the very very tiny load leading to a LOT of amps from not so big a voltage, say 220. As long as the megawatt generator can keep the potential voltage going without exploding or melting itself due to massive current flow.Of course you could control it with a giant rheostat, or giant welding rod. I dunno, let's ground the entire local power plant and find out. First we'll take the fuse out and replace it with a penny, then ----

[BillC]

Your idea amounts to raising the earth to a potential, like a capacitor, and extracting that charge from a remote location, thus transferring energy. This won't work. It is deemed impossible to raise the potential of the earth: it is an infinite charge sink.

Obviously it is possible to raise the potential of the earth, it just takes a LOT of charge. 10MW, incidentally, is nothing much. I tend to regard anything less than 300 MW as being strictly a hobby power station.