UNIVERSITY OF ZIMBABWE

FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND BUILT ENVIRONMENT

DEPARTMENT OF GEOMATICS ENGINEERING

NAME : ARIFETO IVAN TANAKA

REGISTRATION NUMBER : R193649Z

COURSE CODE : MIE317

TITLE : ASSIGNMENT 3

LECTURER : DR J. USEYA
CREATIVITY & INNOVATION
TOPIC: LIGHTNING SEEDING AND HARVESTING ITS ENERGY TO POWER UP
CITIES IN UNDEVELOPED COUNTRIES.
Many undeveloped countries mostly in Africa with particular reference to Zimbabwe are still
grappling with shortages of electricity to power up the households and industries and
ultimately steer up their economies to greater heights. Most of those countries are still heavily
generating and relying on thermal electricity which is an unsustainable way of generating
electricity. Nevertheless, most of them if not all still use this unsustainable way since the cost
of resorting to hydroelectricity is way too expensive. With the adverse effects of climate
change now being felt globally, its high time countries world over tap into harvesting
lightning energy for consumption from household up to the national level to complement
solar energy and other green energy sources.
Borrowing from the concept of cloud seeding, the same strategy can be employed in a similar
manner to increase the frequency and intensity of lightning strikes whenever there is a
thunderstorm. With global warming already being felt, increasing the availability of moisture
over land is a direct way which can trigger a lightning strike. Tall lightning arresters can be
used to harness the strikes. They will be designed in such a way that whenever there is a
strike, it will strike at the conductors first. Although some can argue that, lighting in general
is an environmental hazard, measures can be put in place to curb the adverse effects of
lightning by fixing numerous very long lightning conductors on the ground. All these
conductors are designed in such a way that they feed into a community step down
transformers since a bolt of a lightning strike can contain up to one billion volts of electricity
hence the need for the high voltage electricity to be stepped down.
Tapping into lightning energy for consumption is of utmost importance since it is a renewable
source of energy, clean source thus it resonates well with the recently held COP26 Summit
agenda to mitigate climate change, has the capability of generating huge gigawatts of power,
reduces the adverse effects of lightning among other advantages.