How Many Houses Can We Power with a Lightening Bolt? Or, As a Friend Used To Ask, “Is it Farther To New York or By Car?”

Here’s a video that explains How Many Houses Can We Power with a Lightning Bolt?

There is a lot of useful information here, most of it correct, and, IMO, this is an interesting subject, but:

The first thing to think about here is the difference between energy and power. How many houses can we power for how long? Power X time = energy.

From there, we need to get our units correct. According to the video, “We are using 2800 Watts per hour to power a refrigerator.” That’s like saying I’m driving 40 miles per hour per hour.

Putting all this aside, if it’s true that an average lightning bolt is 10 billion Watts and that power is released in a second, that’s 10 billion Watt-seconds or 3 million Watt-hours or 3000 kiloWatt-hours, which would power an average American home for 3 – 4 months.