The Problem: Lightning strikes have increasingly been causing forest fires.
The Solution: Install lightning rods in forests connected to a water pipe grid to prevent fires.
It has been a year of wildfire as well as Covid, and as a vaccine appears on the horizon for Covid, we also need a solution to wildfires.
There are many things needed to stop wildfires and their intensity, including controlled burning and the creation of firebreaks.
This idea is a simple one to seek to reduce the outbreak of natural fires that are started by lightning strikes.
The idea would be to install very tall lightning rods in forest areas prone to lightning strikes. The rods would attract the lightning onto them, preventing dry trees from being struck and leading to an outbreak of fire.
The rods themselves could be connected up to the national electric grid, although the risk of fires from power lines through forest would need to be addressed, either through adequate clearing of foliage along power lines or burying the lines underground.
Perhaps even better would be to combine the lightning rods with a water pipe system, which would bring water through pipes laid along the fire breaks in forests. If a fire broke out, or if there had been a long dry spell and the forest was full of tinder, batteries beneath the lightning rods would provide power to pump water through the pipes into hoses, which would then flood the forest to prevent the spread or outbreak of fire.
A combination of the two systems – lightning rods and a water system to reduce the risk of fire outbreak – could have a significant effect on reducing fire risk and better enabling emergency service to fight any fires that did break out. Added to that the money made from electricity sold to the national grid during lightning storms, and afterwards as some power stored in batteries was released, and some of the costs of the system could be defrayed.
The lightning rods could also have a plethora of sensors on them to support weather prediction to provide advance warning of fire outbreak risk, and mobile phone repeater stations to improve signal within forest areas, to add further benefits.
Thunderstorms are full of energy, so finding a way to capture the electricity generated by lightning could be a useful addition to the renewable energy mix; doing so in a way that also fights forest fires seems a great place to develop the technology required.
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