| The idea that a lightning bolt could be used as a power up source has been thoroughly debunked by myself and others in this thread already, but I thought I’d take another angle in response, just using electricity in general. A single GE90 aircraft jet engine used in the 777 is up to 111,000 horsepower[0]. So for the Boeing 777, that’s ~220,000HP. Converting horsepower to megawatts, that’s 164MW of power during takeoff (and approximately half that during flight). There’s approximately 500-1000 B777s (very rough, but educated guess) in the air at any given moment during the day. That’s 82.5 gigawatts of power just for the 777 flights alone, not counting all the other commercial aircraft in use. So how much is 82.5GW? > The Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona is the largest nuclear power plant in the United states with three reactors and a total electricity generating capacity1 of about 3,937 MW. So 40+ of the largest nuclear power plants in the US? > average wind turbines produce 1.5MW of power at 100% efficiency So 55,000 wind turbines at minimum? Better hope it’s windy! Flipping it another way: > an average LCD TV uses 200W of power So in other words, turn off 400M TVs around the globe to offset the power needs of up to just 1,000 planes. Now finally... ignoring the electricity generation needs, let’s talk about just battery storage on the plane itself. A typical 18650 (the battery that is commonly used to make large cells, for example in your electric cars) is something like 9W of power. So you’d need something like almost 20,000,000 batteries just for a short flight. Each 18650 weighs about 45g (not including wiring harnesses and safety gear). That’s 200,000 pounds of batteries. The batteries alone for a short flight is multiples of the weight needed in fuel for an international flight. [0] https://www.bangaloreaviation.com/2009/10/worlds-largest-air... |