  Mineral clouds in substellar atmospheres play a special role as a catalyst
for a variety of charge processes. If clouds are charged, the surrounding
environment becomes electrically activated, and ensembles of charged grains are
electrically discharging (e.g. by lightning), which significantly infuences the
local chemistry creating conditions similar to those thought responsible for
life in early planetary atmospheres. We note that such lightning discharges
contribute also to the ionisation state of the atmosphere. We apply scaling
laws for electrical discharge processes from laboratory measurements and
numerical experiments to Drift-Phoenix model atmosphere results to model the
discharge's propagation downwards (as lightning) and upwards (as sprites)
through the atmospheric clouds. We evaluate the spatial extent and energetics
of lightning discharges. The atmospheric volume affected (e.g. by increase of
temperature or electron number) is larger in a brown dwarf atmosphere ($10^8
-~10^{10}$m$^3$) than in a giant gas planet's ($10^4 -~10^{6}$m$^3$). Our
results suggest that the total dissipated energy in one event is $<10^{12}$ J
for all models of initial solar metallicity. First attempts to show the
infuence of lightning on the local gas phase indicate an increase of small
carbohydrate molecules like CH and CH$_2$ at the expense of CO and CH$_4$. Dust
forming molecules are destroyed and the cloud particle properties are frozen-in
unless enough time is available for complete evaporation. We summarise
instruments potentially suitable to observe lightning on extrasolar objects.
