I've seen plenty of remote communications towers that do not have cables. Solar powered with generator backup and microwave relays to the next hop. It's SOP in the railroad industry, and how Sprint got its first backbone. (The "SPR" in "Sprint" is Southern Pacific Railroad.)
Except it would be new technology, could be patented etc.
It's mostly in fiction that fixing X for one person or situation doesn't proliferate into a new way to handle X altogether, and that's done in fiction so the storyline can save the day and then keep pretending we totally live in the same universe as actual reality.
> Except it would be new technology, could be patented etc.
I don't think this works. New technology can only spread if it is worth it. Developing technology for the sake of having new technology is almost always worse than nothing; you would not expect it to proliferate into a new way to handle anything.
Of course, it doesn't guarantee success.
Not to mention the one-off R&D investment you'd be making, along with all the specialty hardware (and its up-front costs), training, etc. involved in capturing lightning. The savings just isn't even remotely worth it.