Usually there is no discernible heat production, although a recent observation reported a wooden plank that was singed. Several people have reported the smell of ozone and nitrogen oxides associated with ball lightning and also static in a transistor radio. Scientists have struggled for decades to formulate a plausible explanation for the existence of a stable plasma ball. A hot globe of plasma should rise like a hot-air balloon, yet observations do not generally report such behavior. There have been hundreds of papers, and at least three books, discussing ball lightning.
Most theories raise more questions than they claim to solve.
Probably the most famous theory was advanced by the Russian Nobel Prize winner Pyotr Kapitsa, who claimed that ball lightning is caused by a standing wave of electromagnetic radiation. Other theories assert a variety of sources of energy for ball lightning, including atomic energy, antimatter, burning material or the electrical field from a cloud. There is no generally accepted theory of ball lightning. I propose that ball lightning is powered by the electrical field associated with dispersing charges in the earth after a lightning strike. The movement of the ball is controlled by the velocity of the electrical charge as it disperses in the ground after the initial period of electrical 'breakdown' that occurs at the moment of the strike.