Next generation of the electricity - Thunder-collecting?

Recently, while searching the web, I discovered very interesting new idea how to satiate voracious world need for the electricity:

     According to the scientist Fernando Galembeck, who published this controversial idea in the August 25th,2010 on the conferrence of American Chemistry Company (ACS), it can be possible to construct plants(panels) able to gather electricity from the atmosphere.

     Likewise photovoltaic turns electricity from sunlight, these ''thunder collecting'' machines could be a source of  a strong, pure and for the most of all, free alternative energy. The panels should gather electricity on the roofs of the buildings and protect families from paying bills for electricity. Also, the panels should gather electricity before a thunder is actially formed and in this way they could safe many lives and possesion losses due to the thunder's damage.

     This is not for the first time, when someone has showed up with using thunders for electricity.
You might have already known that this vision was presented more than 100 years ago by an ingenious inventor and scientist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

This scientist's lifelong goal was to create a system, in which is the electricity conducted through the air without need of wires. He also tried to gather the direct current from thunders, but he had not suffiecient funds and the required technology in his era.

    What is so new about this idea now?
Galmebeck's team stated that it solved a scientist's enigma, which was a riddle for centuries - how exactly is electricity produced and discharged in the atmosphere.
    The main part of the discovery is that when water vapor is collected on microscopic particles of dust and other material in the air, the water has big potentiall for picking up an electric charge. Older studies thought that this microscopical dust with water is electrically neutral.

    Galembeck's team from Brizilian University used laboratory experiment in which tiny particles of silica and aluminum phosphate (common air substances) were simulated to contact with the water. Silica particles became more negatively charged and aluminum phosphate more positively charged in the presence of high humidity. High humidity can be imagine as a ''fog'' or the water vapor in the air.
    
    This proved that ,in the very high humidity, the electrically charged dust particles can accumulate electricity and transfer the charge to materials they come to contact with.

   Galembeck's team called this physical phenomena ''hydroelectricity'' or ''humidity electricity''
The scientists also begun constructing first protoypes of  such devices draining out electricity from the air in areas with frequent thunderstorms.

    The Galembeck's team also already begun with testing metals, reasearching which has the greatest potentiall for capturing atmospheric electricity and preventing lightning strikes

In the opposition to this idea is a group of scientists arguing that according to its calculations, the yield from this ''humidity electrocity'' is about an amount of charge 100 million times smaller over a given area than a solar cell produces. Therefore, it would be totally useless. Galembeck responds to this that the amount can be easily and vastly expanded to useful amount.

   Altough this idea has certainly still a long way to run, once problems solved, the benefits could be more than pleasing.
 

Sources:
http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1059190314
http://www.novinky.cz/veda-skoly/209697-odsavani-elektriny-z-atmosfery-se-ma-stat-zdrojem-energie-budoucnosti.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
http://www.jshumidifiers.com/static-elimination-159-application/