Electrostatic atmospheric charge meter.

Schematic diagram.

  Above is a diagram of an invention I came up with to monitor the charge during a thunderstorm. I wanted something that I could watch the charge to get a relatively decent idea of when lightning may strike. Sort of an early warning, just in case. The main parts of it are listed below.

A capacitor

2 resistors 

A wire loop

And a decently sensitive multimeter or voltmeter.

  The wire loop acts as an antenna and is placed some distance above ground. It is connected electrically to one plate of a capacitor in parallel and one resistor in series. The other wire is the same except instead of being connected to an antenna it is grounded. 

  The atmosphere has a constant electric charge, as one can imagine the charge jumps during a thunderstorm. My device draws a slight bit of charge out of the atmosphere and stores it on the plates of the capacitor. The voltmeter then indicated the voltage between the two plates. The resistors are a very important part of the design, without them the capacitor would discharge as soon as the leads from the meter are placed on it. That would indicate a jump in voltage followed by a slow drop off to zero (fast if using a high capacitance). The resistors give the capacitor a slower discharge rate than the charging rate. 

  A normal capacitor that one can find in many electronic devices will work but the higher the capacitance the more resistance will be needed to keep the capacitor from discharging. I used a homemade capacitor with a capacitance of about .063 microfarads. The resistance is not all too important (unless I want to standardize my device if i make more). I attached several smaller resistors that I found till I had >2000 ohms. The set up worked as soon as I put everything together.

   I tested the device using a 60,000VDC power supply. I measured the charge in the air around the electrodes, I did not connect it directly as that would have blown everything. I did have some issues with the testing where at one point I had a small spark hit the wire loop. This ruined the capacitor and I had to make a new one. I used coaxial cable to keep the losses low, as the voltage from the loop is in the milivolt range. I installed the antenna outside and sufficiently grounded the device. The capacitor is inside resting by a window with the wires leading out to the outside components. So far I have not had a decent thunderstorm to test it with, I just had one tonight, It started at 30mV and then after 10 minutes of measurment it jumper to 93mV and has since peaked at 101mV (it occasionally measures >150 on humid nights). It showed no fluctuation with lightning strikes, although there were none that were close.

Multimeter during thunderstorm.

  One day while watching you tube this teenager had a device which he claimed was a Tesla radiant energy receiver, I looked at it and his set up was roughly the same as my design except without the resistors and with an aluminum foil plate. This intrigued me so I did some research and it turns out Nikola Tesla came up with the same circuit in the late 1800s for utilizing radiant energy from the atmosphere. 

  I read his notes and patents pertaining to the device and built a mock-up using a microwave oven capacitor rated at 1microfarad (measured .97) at 2100v and carefully built an aluminum foil plate and connected the whole thing together very carefully. Tesla had said that it would work with the Tesla coil so I gave it a shot and tested it using my larger Tesla coil. 

   At first I got very good results in the 50VDC range, I also got results in AC. I ultimately found out that because I was using an electronic meter is was picking up interference from the coil even with nothing connected to it. I got slight results when I allowed the capacitor to charge while running the coil with the meter disconnected and measure it afterwards. The voltage wasn't very high and it discharged as soon as I put my meter to it. Leading me to believe that this device would not be a very efficient power collection apparatus.(sorry Tesla) The circuit however seems to work very well for the purpose of my meter. I was slightly disappointed that I was not the first one with the idea but I am honored that the first was Tesla. 

I may or may not add some photos of the rest of the device. Seeing as it is already set up I will only be able to get the individual components separately.

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