Atmospheric Electricity, Birkeland Currents and Hygroelectricity: "Free" Energy From Thin Air?

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Wouldn't it be nice to charge your electric car from energy pulled out of thin air? It's less far-fetched than you might imagine. Ayn Rand wrote about a version of this technology in Atlas Shrugged, though in the book there were fewer drawbacks to it.

What's being discussed here? Atmospheric electricity, for starters. Everybody knows there exist electrical charge differentials between the atmosphere and the Earth. It's why lightning strikes occur. But how can we harvest that energy safely?

Banish from your mind images of Dr. Victor von Frankenstein sending up the weathervane. To exploit the charge differential in a safe, consistent and useful manner, what's needed isn't something on top of your home to attract lightning strikes. What's needed is a conductive tower.

A very, very, very tall tower. How tall? Around 3 or 4 miles. Alternatively, tethered balloons could be used. A cable running down the balloon would equalize the charge differential with the collection station on the ground.

Some have called this "the sleeping giant" of renewables because everywhere on Earth is suitable for it, and the output is continuous with no need of batteries. It is in most respects superior to solar or wind, though the economics of maintaining the balloons isn't unclear yet.

So, what about Birkeland currents? They are electrical currents which flow continuously along geomagnetic field lines, connecting Earth's magnetosphere to the ionosphere above it. This ongoing exchange would be more difficult to tap into than atmospheric electricity because of the greater altitude balloons would need to be sent to, but would potentially yield much higher output.

Exploiting differences in charge between different layers of the atmosphere can be thought of by comparison with the way in which OTEC exploits thermal differentials between different layers of the oceanic water column. Anywhere a differential exists, useful work can be had from equalizing it.

Interestingly, the altitudes involved mean that a space elevator could hypothetically tap into either of these energy sources to power itself. It's about the only structure being seriously considered that would be tall enough to do so.

Now, what about hygroelectricity? That isn't a typo. I didn't mean hydroelectricity, though the two are similar in one respect. This method of extracting useful energy from the air does involve water.

Specifically, water vapor trapped in the air. It was long believed by scientists that atmospheric water vapor was electrically neutral. However as it turned out, that's not the case. The vapor does, in fact, pick up an electrical charge from the air!

The drawback here is that the efficacy of any technology intended to extract electrical energy from charged water vapor in the air would depend greatly on the humidity of the local climate. This is an approach that would work very well in Florida, for example, but not in Arizona.

Will clean energy of the future come from our own atmosphere? Sincere, dedicated efforts are underway to make that a reality. It appears suitable only for grid scale application, but I find little to complain about. Any time humanity identifies a new source of clean energy it didn't recognize before, we all share in that victory.

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^{Stay Cozy!}