Building A Lighting Harnessing Power Plant

How hard would it be to build a power plant that harnesses the electricity generated by lightning? Then, store the electricity and use it on-demand on the electric grid?

This concept is perhaps not as impractical as it once was. The main limiting factor of implementing a lightning capturing scheme such as this was the inability to be able to store large amounts of electricity for later use. However, new Utility Scale Battery technology or other energy storage technologies such as Flywheels or Capacitors could be used to store the electricity captured from lightning in massive quanties, for later grid use.

Obviously, a lightning capturing power plant would only be practical in regions with frequent thunderstorms, such as Florida.

How hard would it be to build an array of lighting rods to capture periodic thunderstorm electricity? The biggest hurdle would really be creating power plant infrastructure that could survive the harsh surges created by lightning strikes, but even that seems possible with current technology and materials. Electrical and building design engineers could come up with an innovative way to make it work. Specially designed buffer/insulation and transformer materials could be used to safely capture and harness the massive amounts of electricity generated during a lighting strike, and transfer it to large storage device for later use.