While theoretically possible, directly receiving and storing usable energy from a lightning strike's pulse is not practical due to the extreme energy and short duration of the event. Lightning is a rapid discharge of electricity, meaning the energy is released almost instantaneously, making it difficult to capture and store. In addition, determining the most practical locations for capture facilities would present a huge host of problems. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, lightning strikes somewhere on the earth approximately 44 times every second, but most of those strikes occur in the tropics and remote mountain regions. Constructing a state-of-the-art energy conversion and storage facility in such conditions would be enormously difficult. Distributing that energy to more populous areas would add even more logistic and economic challenges.

Kirtley remains hopeful that the challenges of lightning capture — if not its economic feasibility — will one day be met. “Just because we don’t harness lightning now doesn’t mean some smart engineer out there won’t someday figure out how to do it,” he says. But even at 1 million joules, the typical lightning strike contains only about ¼ of a kilowatt-hour of power, which is not enough to make much difference on our electric bill. “We currently buy electricity at the cost of about 20 cents a kWh,” he says. “The amount of energy from a lightning bolt would be worth only about a nickel.”