Could lightning be used as a source of energy (RE)?

In my previous article, I was talking about harnessing energy from the blowing wind. We do that by putting up wind turbines or mills.

How about lightning? Can we harness its seemingly huge amount of energy burst into something useful, so that we get a sustainable source of energy?

Lightning strike captured from Suria Sabah shopping mall - Dec 21, 2009

The answer is no, that's at least for now. In future - and I mean not in the near future - who knows, someone could just pop up from somewhere and come out with the big idea.

With around 16 million storms worldwide each year, plus a typical lightning bolts unleashing around 500 million joules of energy, lightning certainly looks impressive! But despite the big number scientists say that all it does is power up an equivalent of 2 households for a day. 

Why so? Because lightning doesn't produce energy. The massive sound and lights you see in the sky is just a process of 'transferring' energy. The energy you could get from the lightning is less than the energy it would take to create some sort of massive negative charge to produce energy.

You can further read here, but to make the story short, as a source of reliable energy, lightning is hopeless. You'd better be worrying about avoiding a lightning strike, than to spend your precious time trying to harness it to provide electricity for your home.