My story has just informed me that part of it is set on a planet whose most exceptional feature is that it has a very strong natural electrical field/ground-to-astmosphere current. Strong enough that flourescent lights don't need an external power source and nights of St. Elmo's Fire are as common as rainy ones.

Yeah. I'm usually very good with Earth science, but I still get watts and volts confused half the time, and when they start talking about webers and teslas I end up rocking back and forth and moaning "math is hard!" SO I appeal to you people. The St. Elmo's Fire and the (at least marginal) habitability (even if only over a few hundred square miles) are required; anything else is negotiable.

( Some specific questions )

Oh, and anyone is welcome to suggest a better name for the colony than my current working one, which is, regrettably, "St. Elmo's World". (This counts as a "little detail" because only about one or two scenes are actually set on this planet. Writing hard sf is *hard*, man.)

ETA: This was supposed to go to little_details, but I'll leave it here too just in case ya'll can help any.)