Obayagbona Emmanuel Imafidon revealed that he developed a power-generating device that can end blackout.
Obayagbona Emmanuel Imafidon revealed that he developed a power-generating device that can end blackout. He said this has been certified by professors from the University of Nigeria. The engineering graduate said he needed the support of the government to fully develop it. A Nigerian engineer, Obayagbona Emmanuel Imafidon, has revealed that he has invented a power-generating device that can solve the problem power outage in the country. In an interview with Guardian, the graduate of Electrical Engineering from the Institute of Management and Technology in Enugu said he could generate power from thunder lightning and that he has been working on it since 2006.
He said: “I have been researching on generating constant power from thunder lightning. That is using a strike of thunder lightning to generate power that can serve Nigeria and Africa for five years and 30 days. That means that whenever thunder strike for once, we are sure of uninterrupted power for five years and thirty days.”
“One may think it is not possible and if it is possible why the western world has not converted lightning to electricity, but what I have developed so far is a prototype. There are five chambers including the trapping zone which is made of lightning arrestor. There is the storage zone and the conversion zone, which convert static energy into current electricity and transmit the energy into transmission zone.”
The transmission zones will first of all step down the power from as high as five mega volts and there are five storage zones that have the capacity of storing over 25 mega volts of power. “When it stores the 25 MV of power, the conversion zone takes one mega vote at a time, send signals to other sensory zones which shut down other sensory zones from discharging at the same time. Now the transmission zone of the power generating plant will step down the megavolt to whatever Nigerians need. For instance, Nigeria is generating 330,000 megavolts, but my device generate 5 million volts and then give Nigerians their 330 KV and still have about 4670, 000 megavolts left as reserve.”
“Taking a look at the prototype, the first time I worked on it was March 10, 2006. I built this prototype with five zones — the power trapping zone, the annexing zone and in between the annexing zone, there is the sensory zone, conversion zone and transmission zone. In Nigeria, we are generating 330,000 volts. Now when thunder strikes, the trapping zone (which is made of trapping arrestor) will trap a maximum of 5 mega volts from 330mgv that comes from lightning. Lightning comes with 330 mega volts and the trapping arrestor here is capable of trapping five million megavolts, thereby allowing 330 megavolts to be wasted in the atmosphere for other lightning arrestors to trap and neutralise the energy to the ground through a process called earthling. If you look at most masts around, you will see something like a Y-metallic shape placed on top of a building, this is called lightning arrestor.
The lightning arrestor is used to trap the power discharged from lightning and this comes with a lightning power of about 20 billion watts, while in Nigeria we are generating 2,600 megawatts of power. The voltage lightning comes along with 330 megavolts, while we are generating 330,000 megavolts. So you can see that there is a far cry between lightning energy and hydro electricity which the country relies on.”
“The trapping zone will be built by the Russians, Germany or USA in order to capture a maximum of 5 mega volts and allow 330,000 megavolts to be wasted in the atmosphere for the trapping arrestor. Now, the five megavolts trapped by lightning will send the signal or energy to the annexing zone. You can see that we have so many trapping zones here and that is because you don’t know the direction lightning may come from. So, we cannot use one lightning director to achieve the purpose and that is why we have several lightning arrestors here. We have various strategic places where these lightning arrestors will be mounted because we have some places that are prone to lightning and these include some parts of Enugu State like IMT area and Zik Avenue.”
When this lightning arrestor traps the lightning, it transmits energy down the annexing zone. Enugu State is going to be one of our trapping zones of lightning energy. We are going to have one in Edo, Cross River, Rivers and Delta states. “These riverine areas are prone to lightning. After that, the transmission zone captures each storage zone which accommodates five megavolts each. The five storage zones will give 25 megavolts. With this you can move this quantity through the sensory zones, so that when one is discharging energy, signals will be sent to other sensory zones to trap down other capacitors so that they will not discharge at the same time.”
“The NSE is there to further the experiment, research, inventions to bring them into limelight. I found out that government set aside funds for research but how the funds are being used is a different kettle of fish. I am emphasising on NSE because in the USA, when a young person invents anything, all their engineers gather to give their support. But in Nigeria, they will want you to carry out the research alone so that when you fail, they will say you don’t know what you are talking about. One major advantages of generating power from lightning is that it will save Nigeria from constant blackout. Every time you hear that water level has dropped and as such we are not able to generate enough electricity. There is no year that thunder does not strike in Nigeria and one strike of lightning can give power for five years and thirty days, then we will have enough power for our home and industrial needs.”
Source: Naij.com — News Nigeria.
