We had a thunderstorm last night, which is pretty rare for Seattle. We get lots of rain clouds, but little in the way of fireworks. Still, it’s cool to look at.

Which brings back a question I wonder about now and again: Why don’t we use lightning for our utilities?

Obviously, we couldn’t run everything on lightning power, but it seems to me that, with the right kind of capacitor, the energy from lightning strikes could be used to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we use.

I imagine the real kink in this plan is “right kind of capacitor.” Is someone working on this? I can’t imagine there’s no one, but I haven’t seen anything about it.