https://hackaday.com/2024/01/27/harvesting-electricity-from-high-voltage-transmission-lines-using-fences/ Skip to content Logo Hackaday Primary Menu * Home * Blog * Hackaday.io * Tindie * Hackaday Prize * Submit * About * Search for: [ ] [Search] January 28, 2024 Harvesting Electricity From High-Voltage Transmission Lines Using Fences 126 Comments * by: Maya Posch January 27, 2024 * * * * * Title: [Harvesting Electrici] Copy Short Link: [https://hackaday.com] Copy [hv_transmi] When you have a bunch of 230 kV transmission lines running over your property, why not use them for some scientific experiments? This is where the [Double M Innovations] YouTube channel comes into play, including a recent video where the idea of harvesting electricity from HV transmission lines using regular fences is put to an initial test. The nearly final measurement by [Double M Innovations].The nearly final voltage measurement by [Double M Innovations].A rather hefty 88 uF, 1200 V capacitor, a full bridge rectifier, and 73 meters (240 feet) of coax cable to a spot underneath the aforementioned HV transmission lines. The cable was then put up at a height consistent with that of fencing at about 1.2 m (4 ft), making sure that no contact with the ground occurred anywhere. One end of the copper shield of the coax was connected to the full bridge rectifier, with the opposite AC side connected to a metal stake driven into the ground. From this the capacitor was being charged. As for the results, they were rather concerning and flashy, with the 1000 VAC-rated multimeter going out of range on the AC side of the bridge rectifier, and the capacitor slowly charging up to 1000 V before the experiment was stopped. Based on the capacity of the capacitor and the final measured voltage of 907 VDC, roughly 36.2 Joule would have been collected, giving some idea of the power one could collect from a few kilometers of fencing wire underneath such HV lines, and why you probably want to ground them if energy collecting is not your focus. As for whether storing the power inductively coupled on fence wire can be legally used is probably something best discussed with your local energy company. Thanks to [Keith Olson] for the tip. * [share_face] * [share_twit] * [share_in] * [share_mail] Posted in High Voltage, ScienceTagged high voltage, inductive coupling, transmission line Post navigation - Ground-Effect Vehicle To Carry Passengers Around Hawaii Hotshot 3D Printed Hovercraft Is Devastatingly Fast - 126 thoughts on "Harvesting Electricity From High-Voltage Transmission Lines Using Fences" 1. Ray says: January 27, 2024 at 8:10 pm "As for whether storing the power inductively coupled on fence wire can be legally used is probably something best discussed with your local energy company." Seriously? Stealing is stealing. Like that will not set off a few red-flags! Report comment Reply 1. Huie says: January 27, 2024 at 9:02 pm It's more how the law IS supposed to be black and white and the verbiage regarding theft of utilities presents mostly preventing physical attachment to "steal" it not the theft of energy itself. Report comment Reply 1. DerAxeman says: January 27, 2024 at 10:55 pm There is no physical connection through an isolation transformer but you get billed for the power used on the other side just the same. Magnetic coupliing through the air is legally the same as it is through an iron core. Theft is theft. Report comment Reply 1. M says: January 28, 2024 at 4:55 am If a fire hydrant breaks in my neighborhood, and they choose to never fix it & let the water bleed into the neighborhood. Is it still stealing if i occasionally take a bucket of runoff? Report comment Reply 1. Craig says: January 28, 2024 at 10:53 am Not remotely the same situation. Electrical powerlines produce magnetic fields, there is nothing to fix like in your fire hydrant analogy. I'm an electrician and this isn't a new idea. Mary of farmers have been prosecuted over the years from ceiling power from electrical companies. Report comment 2. ezy says: January 28, 2024 at 6:45 am Theft is theft? They are irradiating you. If your cow wanders onto someone else's land they they didn't steal it. Same property should apply. If they don't want you to use the electomagnetic radiation they are sending through your property they should install proper sheilding and keep in on their property. Report comment Reply 1. Dustin says: January 28, 2024 at 7:12 am You can get your cow back. Report comment 2. MICHELLE WOODARD says: January 28, 2024 at 11:02 am In this experiment it would appear they are deliberately putting a wire under the transmission line. This makes it stealing since this is the utilities property. Not yours, not theirs. You are not be radiated unless u choose to hang out under the line. Which would make u a trespasser since it is not your property under those line, it is the property of the utility. Report comment 3. Pat says: January 28, 2024 at 11:12 am "If they don't want you to use the electomagnetic radiation" This is *not* what's happening. At all. It's inductive coupling, not radiative. The act of you putting the conductive material there actually *generates* more radiation than existed in the first place. Report comment 3. Sword says: January 28, 2024 at 7:53 am Not true. At least in the US reception of radio waves is *not* illegal (even if they are meant for someone/ something else) because they are broadcast, so I can't see how this would be any different. The power company could properly shield their lines. They don't so they are "broadcasting energy" you are simply receiving it. Report comment Reply 1. Pat says: January 28, 2024 at 11:15 am This is inductive coupling, not electromagnetic - you're *way* too close to be in the far-field at 60 Hz. You're actually affecting the transmission lines, not harvesting radiated emissions that are already lost. "The power company could properly shield their lines." It's magnetic, not electromagnetic. Not *impossible* to shield, but pretty darn close. Report comment 2. Anthony says: January 27, 2024 at 9:51 pm It's not stealing, this energy is being radiated off whether somone collects it or not, it's just natural line loss. Report comment Reply 1. Jan says: January 28, 2024 at 2:12 am Its not radiated off if theres no receiver or pickup near by. Report comment Reply 1. Richard Baker says: January 28, 2024 at 6:14 am That's like saying a radio station is not broadcasting if no radio is turned on. Does not make any sense. Report comment Reply 2. Quentin J Sarafinchan says: January 28, 2024 at 10:20 am Your logic is same as the tree falling in the forest, does it make a sound if no one heard it. Yes it does . The energy is radiated off even if it's not collected in wires Report comment Reply 2. Marty says: January 28, 2024 at 2:32 am I agree! Thats line loss and if you can figure out a way to collect it then its yours. That isnt stealing! Thats basically like oil thats underground , if you can get to it and pump it up to collect it, then its yours. Report comment Reply 1. T S says: January 28, 2024 at 2:14 pm No. The US has laws on mineral rights. You own the surface but they own the subsurface and can sell or lease the rights to what's underneath to whoever they want, and you're not allowed to dig for it yourself. Report comment Reply 3. Karl Lambley says: January 28, 2024 at 2:36 am No it isn't. An extra load causes extra power generation upstream. Induction losses here are different to regular capacitive losses. This abstracted energy needs replacing. Report comment Reply 1. I Alone Possess the Truth says: January 28, 2024 at 8:53 am You're essentially saying an L-shaped piece of metal (coax+groundrod) in the neighborhood creates a) a load and b) a crime? Report comment Reply 4. Alan Lau says: January 28, 2024 at 9:55 am I think what happens if you siphon off electricity in this manner is that down the line less electricity reaches its destination. The power company will detect this and can eventually located the location of the power drain. A similar incident occurred perhaps 50 yrs ago someplace , I think in Northern California A farmer noticed he was getting shocked everything he drove his tractor under the power lines on his property. Being rather clever, he coiled some wires on the ground (so in this way the wires cut through the magnetic lines of force created by the power lines) and was thus able to generate electricity. The power company did detect this and eventually made the farmer take down/disassemble his makeshift generator. Report comment Reply 3. Orbit says: January 27, 2024 at 9:59 pm The landowners did not authorize the power company to use the dielectric constant of the space above their land. They were not stealing but trying to return the electromagnetic environment above their land to a neutral state. Report comment Reply 1. David says: January 28, 2024 at 8:15 am If the easement is for an electric line, the permission to affect the surrounding environment's electromagnetic state is probably implied. That said, a neighboring property owner who did not grant an easement may be able to make this argument. Report comment Reply 4. jpa says: January 27, 2024 at 10:44 pm Yet if you don't do tuned inductive coupling or anything like that, the energy collected probably just comes from the capacitive coupling which would leak current to ground or nearby fence in any case. Is it theft if you walk on your yard by the light that the neighbour's lamp casts to your property? Report comment Reply 1. Dude says: January 28, 2024 at 4:55 am >in any case. No. Even in that case, by bringing the wire up closer to the line and drawing power from it, you change the electric field around the power line and make it leak more. Report comment Reply 5. Jamie wallace says: January 27, 2024 at 10:44 pm Never tried a fence, but that out dated and retired from radio massive ham radio antenna worked like a charm and you'd be surprised how much energy came through, well after some added gadgets and a few caps and couple diodes then those said gadgets putting said energy into battery storage, but just harvested it right into my backup power grid bank. Like a savings account.. helps out a lot.. lol that massively priced antenna has paid for its self and the new one, he'll the next one after this is paid for by the old one.. it's been a lucrative Venture. I mean it was already there. Nobody else was using it, so why not. Not my fault they leak power like a cheap diaper does piss.. same with those satellite tv signals,, it was there and already floating through me and all my properties so why not use it. Don't pump it through my home and I won't snatch it up and harvest it.. good stuff tho.. needed that power to watch my free satellite programs Report comment Reply 1. John H Wells says: January 28, 2024 at 9:03 am How close do u have to be to harvest the electricity with a radio tower Report comment Reply 2. Andy Hastings says: January 28, 2024 at 10:18 am If the utility was stressed to the point that it is substantial, the should replace the AC to DC. This is being done in many places were a lot of power is being transfered I would be happy if someone who knows, how much energy will be lost with buried cabling? Report comment Reply 6. Adrie says: January 28, 2024 at 1:18 am But the energy company will have to show what part of the captures energy is from them: this long wire will pick up energy from many sources (radiosignals) all contributing to the result. Report comment Reply 7. hackaday.inputoutput says: January 28, 2024 at 1:23 am What if it was just a short circuit and instead of charging the capacitor it would just generate heat? Is owning any metal stuff, at least large enough, also a theft? Report comment Reply 8. gondo says: January 28, 2024 at 2:15 am Are you also "stealing" light from public light poles? Report comment Reply 9. Anonymous says: January 28, 2024 at 3:20 am That's absolutely ridiculous. It's the scale of the "theft" that's important. This is so trivial the power company is unlikely to detect it at all, it is buried in the natural variation in line losses due to weather conditions, etc. The inherent losses in the power line are so large anyway, by orders and orders of magnitude. Report comment Reply 10. Mike says: January 28, 2024 at 6:02 am Many years ago in the state of Nevada some people who lived out in remote areas found they could.light thea area just hanging florescent lights in the trees due to high magnetic fields. Power company took them to court and it was deemed that the power company wrote off losses for the creation of these magnetic field and that if someone found a way to use what to what was lost that the power company had no right to what they wrote.off Report comment Reply 11. Mark says: January 28, 2024 at 8:23 am The radio transmission from high power lines cannot be "stopen". This is a side affect of transmission, much like breathing nitrogen is a side affect of breathing oxygen. While harvesting these loose radio waves is not theft, it is dangerous because of the high amperage and voltages collected. Radio waves may be " harvested" legally. Theft of power needs to incur a loss to the owning party. Salvage is the collection of abandon property. Yes there is a lot of legal precedent for salvage. Nothing here is being stolen. Yes, it helps to have an attorney well versed in law before you attempt to sell power to anyone, but harvest lost power for personal ise is a benefit of property ownership. IF you own the property. A right if way for transmissible does not constitute ownership. Report comment Reply 12. Chuck says: January 28, 2024 at 10:41 am Harnessing waves from the air can hardly be considered stealing. You must be one of the anti rain collection crowd. Report comment Reply 13. Chuck says: January 28, 2024 at 10:46 am If this isn't on power company property and being captured through the air, I don't agree. You must be one of the anti rainwater collection types. Report comment Reply 14. Phred says: January 28, 2024 at 10:48 am Creating an induction Transformer to harvest energy is theft. Doing this reduces the amount of power that's in the line, taking it in using it for your own purposes. That's theft. It's simple theft. The sort of thing has been tried and settled in courts well over 50 years ago. I suppose you could argue that if you walk out of a Walmart with a Coca-Cola that you didn't pay for and no one catches you that it's okay. And I suppose you could argue that if you take electricity that you didn't pay for it's okay. But it's not. And if they catch you there will be hell to pay. Report comment Reply 15. Randy Griffin says: January 28, 2024 at 11:00 am It is on the electrical utility to shield well enough not to loose that power...plus...what harm are they doing if they admit their lines have that effect? Report comment Reply 2. MmmDee says: January 27, 2024 at 8:31 pm It was popular a decade or two ago to do things like this until power companies came out and decided this was theft and threatened to prosecute people. Every locality however might be different. Some entities may just consider this too much of a liability to allow consumers to do this. Report comment Reply 3. echodelta says: January 27, 2024 at 8:40 pm There is no magnetic induction happening here. This is electrostatic in nature. The high voltage line has great potential to induce an opposite charge on the antenna, and very poor magnetic induction coupling from the HV low amperage line. Report comment Reply 1. DerAxeman says: January 28, 2024 at 12:32 am You have to throw a few Maxwell equations around to quantify that claim. If you do the math right you will find you are mistaken. Report comment Reply 1. Matthias says: January 28, 2024 at 4:05 am ... and while you are at it, calculate the voltages and currents involved in parallel lengths of wire when a single phase short happens on the line. (Such a fault is medium rare, but if you touch the wire at that time, so are you.) Report comment Reply 2. M says: January 28, 2024 at 12:31 pm The onus is on you. Claim "the math says" and you must supply it. Report comment Reply 4. mgrusin says: January 27, 2024 at 8:41 pm I'd love to see this settled in a court of law (if it hasn't been already). My defense would be if they don't want you harvesting their power, they should keep their EM field off your property. Report comment Reply 1. James Bruce says: January 27, 2024 at 9:00 pm Utilities buy right of ways for transmission lines. It is stealing when you use a product made for sale and do not pay for it. Report comment Reply 1. AZdave says: January 27, 2024 at 9:22 pm This. Report comment Reply 1. David says: January 27, 2024 at 9:52 pm AND the induction could be considered troublesome-effecting human body electrical fields as well. Report comment Reply 1. Colby says: January 28, 2024 at 12:13 pm Unless your body is made of metal then electromagnetic induction isn't really an issue to us fleshy beings. Report comment 2. Ostracus says: January 27, 2024 at 9:52 pm [this space reserved for every piracy argument ever] Report comment Reply 1. David says: January 28, 2024 at 8:19 am ^^ space to small, bigger internet needed. Report comment Reply 3. anonymous says: January 27, 2024 at 10:35 pm Is using a crystal radio stealing from the radio station? Report comment Reply 1. Adrie says: January 27, 2024 at 11:46 pm No. A radiostation puts energy in the air with the purpose of you and me 'harvesting' this energy. Report comment Reply 2. DerAxeman says: January 28, 2024 at 12:37 am Radio stations explicitly broadcast for you to receive what they are transmitting. So no. However if you build a large antenna next to their transmitter to harvest energy from it they have the right to go after you. Report comment Reply 3. Pat says: January 28, 2024 at 12:33 pm A crystal radio doesn't affect the transmitter. It's in the far field. This is not receiving far-field emissions. Report comment Reply 4. KDawg says: January 28, 2024 at 12:17 am I used to own a home with a high tension line just outside my property line, and I never saw a Nickle. I did see their trucks drive over, and completely mess up a tiny part of my land once in a blue moon Report comment Reply 1. Dan says: January 28, 2024 at 1:26 am The payment probably went to whoever owned the property when the line went up, as it'll have reduced the sale value. You bought it with the line there, at a price that reflected that it had a power line over it. Report comment Reply 5. daveb says: January 28, 2024 at 12:44 am hahaha no. Its not stealing. Its just another sales policy. Report comment Reply 6. Sword says: January 28, 2024 at 8:00 am A right of way is the physical land. It is not the emissions. Please tell me how this is any different than receiving radio signals as it is not illegal to rx radio signals that are broadcast to the public. The energy here is broadcast to the public, because the power company is cheap. OP was simply receiving. Report comment Reply 1. David says: January 28, 2024 at 8:27 am IANAL, but "common sense" would say the right of way if for the use specified in the easement. If that use is for a power line, then there's the implicit right to send out electromagnetic power into the air, subject of course to government regulations pertaining to power transmission (the power companies can't do things for the purpose of, say, deliberately messing up your AM radio transmission, but if carrying power causes incidental interference that doesn't violate FCC rules or other laws, you are out of luck). As I said in a post a bit higher up, neighboring property owners MAY have claims that the property owner where the easement/right-of-way lies does not. The whole discussion may be moot though. I'll need to check with a lawyer, but I suspect that power companies long ago got the rules written in their favor for situations like this. Report comment Reply 2. Bob says: January 28, 2024 at 12:18 pm Not illegal to receive radio signals on your porperty, but it's usually illegal to sell the content and make a profit. Report comment Reply 3. Pat says: January 28, 2024 at 12:27 pm Because it's not receiving an emission. It's in the near field - it's inductively coupling, and causes a drain on the transmitted power (as opposed to receiving emissions, which would *not* cause a drain). It's the same as climbing up and clipping on a wire. Report comment Reply 4. Wood Hughes says: January 28, 2024 at 12:55 pm I agree. Assuming the fence is off the right of way, if the utility objects to your harvesting their spillage, they need to find a way to prevent it from leaving their paid for ROW. Report comment Reply 2. Jamie wallace says: January 27, 2024 at 10:33 pm Dam right Report comment Reply 1. Martini says: January 28, 2024 at 5:35 am No. That'll be hydro-electric power from that! Report comment Reply 3. Fred says: January 28, 2024 at 5:18 am Yes they are poluting your property. What are the side effects to you. Report comment Reply 4. Charles Springer says: January 28, 2024 at 7:24 am In the USA it was settled 90 years ago in the 1930's during Rural Electrification when word got around that a farmer could run a light bulb with a wire on a fence along the new power lines. Settled in the courts as theft despite the many logical and electrical fallacies being put forward through ignorance. Report comment Reply 1. RF Dude says: January 28, 2024 at 2:48 pm No matter anyone's thoughts and physical explanations, even logically sound, the legislative and judicial result has the last word. If you think and do otherwise, it would be best to be discrete. Report comment Reply 5. Pat says: January 28, 2024 at 12:29 pm "they should keep their EM field off your property." Why should they have to keep their magnetic field off your property when you're not keeping *yours* off of theirs? That's how inductive coupling works. It's in the reactive near field, which means *you're* putting a back EMF on *them*. Report comment Reply 6. TG says: January 28, 2024 at 1:09 pm You think a US court will side with you over the utility? Ha Report comment Reply 5. Gabriel says: January 27, 2024 at 9:21 pm Yea, that's a crime... Report comment Reply 1. TG says: January 28, 2024 at 1:10 pm Oh no! Anyway. Report comment Reply 6. Miles says: January 27, 2024 at 9:51 pm Nevermind the crime, seems deathly dangerous Report comment Reply 7. typ_o says: January 27, 2024 at 9:55 pm Did not fully understand that setup with the coax cable. He said he is connecting "one end" to the rectifier and "one end" to ground - i suspect he is using core and shield on his end of the wire? I tried myself a single wire against ground with good success. Can't understand the benefit of using coax at this point. Report comment Reply 1. Its me paw says: January 27, 2024 at 10:46 pm Just keeping a somewhat of a ground closer to that power feed.. there's enough there to hurt you, maybe not 24/7 but my luck, well let's just say I ain't won the lottery yet.. so yeah Report comment Reply 1. Jan says: January 28, 2024 at 2:23 am Electricity strikes in open air at 1cm/1KV. In this case it will 2.3m away. Report comment Reply 1. MZ says: January 28, 2024 at 10:11 am 10 kV/cm (or 1 kV/mm) Report comment Reply 2. Dodo says: January 28, 2024 at 1:23 am I think he just had the coax and is using the shield as a single wire... Report comment Reply 8. Mike says: January 27, 2024 at 10:49 pm Going by morality, more important than legislation, It is stealing WHEN it draws more power out of the grid than would naturally be lost to a normal environmental feature. I would guess it would be a bit like the way a DC motor is harder to turn from its shaft when you put a smaller ohmic resistance across its terminals, the higher an amount of power you try to get, the more power losses will be suffered by the line. So if the power you are drawing off is milliwatts, or whatever is broadly equivalent to what a fence not designed to steal electricity might cause acidental loss of, then it isn't stealing morally. It is harvesting an environmental resource, even if technically the power company is paying someone to pay someone else to pay a power station to buy fuel to burn (or fission) (or maintain a wind turbine) to provide the electricity. If merely having a fence in place already takes a tiny bit of power from the lines, then finding a way to use that amount of power otherwise lost to heating the fence (and no more) is ok. But adding a fence optimised to take more of the power becomes theft. As soon as you start harvesting so "much" (and it won't be much) that the power station needs to burn the single smallest detectable currency unit more fuel to account for it, then it becomes stealing. So if you want to charge a tiny sensor or something then morally you're fine, but this is an awfully big piece of bothersome wiring needed for what is a tiny amount of power than can be extracted before you cross the moral line in to being a filthy thief. The only amount of power which can be morally drawn from this is an amount of power probably not worth bothering to draw. Report comment Reply 1. Snide says: January 28, 2024 at 6:37 am First, going by legislation is a form of morality. Second, there are lots of morals, and they all depend on where you happen to be. The root of the word is "custom", as in "when in Rome do as the romans do." If someone throws a rock into my living room, do I have to give it back? An electric company may have purchased an easement over my property, but I doubt they contracted for the right to irradiate me with EMF, I'd charge them by the MW-meter transported through at any rate. Report comment Reply 2. Charles Springer says: January 28, 2024 at 7:11 am This was settled in the 1930's in the US with rural electrification. It is theft because with a delicate enough meter, the use can be seen from the power station. You are suggesting that an infinite number of setups that take the equivalent of "an environmental feature" will be morally right. Or would you place a limit on the number Feature-Equivalent Power units a person can use before they cross the FEP ethical limit? Report comment Reply 3. I Alone Possess the Truth says: January 28, 2024 at 9:15 am "If merely having a fence in place already takes a tiny bit of power from the lines, then finding a way to use that amount of power otherwise lost to heating the fence (and no more) is ok. But adding a fence optimised to take more of the power becomes theft. As soon as you start harvesting so "much" (and it won't be much) that the power station needs to burn the single smallest detectable currency unit more fuel to account for it, then it becomes stealing." So doing something badly, legal. Doing the same thing well, illegal. Hmm. Seems to me there must be all kinds of natural grounds out there, jus' drainin' them pahr lines. Piezoelectric microphones steal my speech, but I got back at them I stole the Grand Canyon on a family vacation last summer. If it can't be detected by someone sitting in a power station control room, and I suspect it can't, m'kay? it's not theft. Report comment Reply 1. Duncan Thomas says: January 28, 2024 at 10:20 am Me hooking my whole house up to anywhere on the grid (assuming I do it correctly without causing a fault) is not detectable in a power station control room - a few KW is just noise. I assure you it's still very illegal and will definitely get prosecuted though Report comment Reply 4. TG says: January 28, 2024 at 1:11 pm That isn't how law works. The only question is "does the party with the most money stand to make more from this?" Report comment Reply 9. Paul says: January 27, 2024 at 10:56 pm Why not just tie a rock to a wire and throw it up and over the overhead line? (Kidding!) Report comment Reply 1. TG says: January 28, 2024 at 1:11 pm A safe and legal thrill Report comment Reply 10. Velemu says: January 27, 2024 at 11:29 pm There was one case in Finland in The 90s, where someone did this to power their summer cottage. When Power company found, where the extra parasitic load came from, they sued the guy to hell and back again. This kind of load is actually actively measured by Power companies, since it is also used to find other failure modes on powerlines, and is easy to detect. Just don't do it.... Report comment Reply 1. Dude says: January 28, 2024 at 5:05 am Source needed. It's incredibly difficult to pull kilowatts out of a power line by induction without pulling kilometers of cable next to it. Reason being that in three phase power lines, the far field external magnetic field largely cancels itself out. Stories about people burying drums of iron junk in the ground and wrapping cables around them are basically bunk. Report comment Reply 2. TG says: January 28, 2024 at 1:13 pm Until I see his setup myself that is and urban legend. I would love to see how you'd do this (how many watts was he pulling?) but it's almost always a tall tale Report comment Reply 11. Andy says: January 27, 2024 at 11:45 pm I mean... what's to say that any given hunk of conductive anything under the power lines isn't getting hot and corroding, and causing problems. Anyways, yeah of course it's stealing but more like showing up at 5:00 AM at everybody's house on trash day and pulling all the beer cans out of the blue bin kind of stealing. Funny my grandpa told me about guys doing this 80 years ago. Report comment Reply 1. Davidp says: January 28, 2024 at 4:47 am My in-laws had a condo with aluminum siding near a high voltage tower. Kept having issues with their electronics failing. My father-in-law measured 70 VAC on the siding with enough current to be concerning. Report comment Reply 1. todd3465 says: January 28, 2024 at 9:16 am 70VAC is suspiciously similar to readings on a 120VAC line (US) with a bad neutral. As to it being on the al siding, I once did an hvac ducting job for a new large addition after the contractors doing initial renovation removed the al siding from the original addition to be razed and the addition caught fire that night (it was contained to a small area). The siding guys reported getting shocks wile removing siding and gutters and sure enough the insurance/fire inspectors found the cause to be one of the 3'' siding nails puncturing a wire (yes 3'' siding nails were common though crazy imo) So may or may not be related? Report comment Reply 12. Adrie says: January 28, 2024 at 1:36 am If the powergrid in your house has a live and neutral (not l1 and l2!) There will be a small voltage between the neutral and (protective) earth line. I used to connect a small lightbulb (like a bicycle tail-light) to make use of this 'free' energy. It depends on the metering device if it will be measured, plus, in modern systems with differential detectors (residual current breaker - not sure of the right term?) any current above 30mA or so it will trigger the breaker. Report comment Reply 1. David says: January 28, 2024 at 8:31 am "Not sure of the right term" - do you mean a ground fault interrupter? Report comment Reply 13. Adrie says: January 28, 2024 at 1:41 am So what if you do the same not being near to a high voltage transmission line? You will also be able to harvest energy from the air. Sources range from radiosignals, cosmic radiation (including the big bang), the neighbours wifi and many more. Probably enough for a few LEDs, and to charge a phone in about a half year or so. It will be challenging for anyone to claim their part... Report comment Reply 1. k1r4 says: January 28, 2024 at 2:19 am and with what you just said im wondering how well a metal flag pole would do in a more suburban area than whats shown in the top picture Report comment Reply 14. Nowt says: January 28, 2024 at 4:21 am He could have just held up a florescent light bulb and he would have seen the light bulb light up with nothing attached to light bulb. Very effective demo at night. Report comment Reply 15. Glenn Bland says: January 28, 2024 at 4:26 am He's not physically touching their property other than being on the easement side. Other than that , this is the utilities problem not his ! Report comment Reply 16. Wlove says: January 28, 2024 at 4:32 am So, what about the electricity affecting something like a cochlear implant, would this be considered an environmental impact for deaf ppl via pollution? Report comment Reply 17. Ian says: January 28, 2024 at 4:44 am I work for a power company. This could easily get buried in the "system losses." I think you could easily get away with it unless you posted it on the Internet or somehow made it a problem for the transmission operator. It's true that power is metered on each end of the line, but it's metered in megawatts. You'd have to be pulling a good 5MW before anyone would notice. Counting kilowatts on transmission lines is not a worthwhile use of an employee's time. As for whether it's legal or not is clearly debatable. I'd consider it from the perspective of a judge who probably knows nothing about transmission losses and capacitive charging. Personally, I wouldn't do this! Report comment Reply 18. Mark Jordan says: January 28, 2024 at 4:48 am Ok, you will not be allowed to have fences near HV transmission lines because they will drain power from those lines. Report comment Reply 19. Old EE says: January 28, 2024 at 5:24 am People have been doing this for decades, and by this I mean get "free" power from nearby power lines. They always get caught and the reason helps explain why it isn't free. The pickup of the power charges the complex impedance of the transmission line with respect to ground. The power drawn as "free" is often much smaller than the additional power lost in transmission along the remaining line. Even a small change at those power levels can generate a large amount of heat along the transmission line that is bad. Each change in impedance will reflect a wave back to the sending side. The power company will use time domain reflectometry (TDR) to figure out how far this changed impedance is and drive a truck out to check it. This is important to them as it could mean something is wrong and needs to be fixed. The TDR gear is often good to a few centimeters and the operators can look at the pulse and often get a good clue what to look for. Report comment Reply 20. Diego says: January 28, 2024 at 5:37 am In Argentina there are places where high voltage lines pass literally meters from precarious homes. It is possible to light a lamp by simply holding it in your hand as is done with the Tesla tower experiment. Report comment Reply 21. paulvdh says: January 28, 2024 at 6:47 am So how long did it take to put 36 Joules into that capacitor? Apparently it took a few minutes to go from 500V to 900V, so that is likely less then 200mW. Power loss from the transmission lines is a real concern for the electricity companies. When electricity has to be transported over long distances, HVDC is used because loss between the AC wiring and GND is significant. But that is for lines of 2000km long or thereabouts. The electricity company really is not going to care whether they have capacitive loss to the GND or into some fence set up by a farmer. I can imagine them being worried that people kill themselves while doing stupid things like this. People are being dumbed down so much that even the press is likely to blame the electricity company when people manage to get a darwin award in this way. Such things also are bread and butter for the tin hat people who are afraid of any electromagnetic field and loudly proclaiming their ignorance. Report comment Reply 1. Eric Ayers says: January 28, 2024 at 6:55 am I did that math too. It's a miniscule amount of energy. I think the legal concerns in running such a setup should be more about safety and sparking a fire with a high voltage setup rather than theft. Report comment Reply 2. Jay says: January 28, 2024 at 7:43 am I think you are misinformed about using HVDC for long distance transmission of power . HVAC is used specifically for that purpose. HVDC is only used locally to bridge disparate systems which are not phase synchronized with each other. Report comment Reply 1. paulvdh says: January 28, 2024 at 11:04 am No, not mistaken. Have a look at for example at this 2375 km long system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Madeira_HVDC_system Wikipedia also has a list with about 150 installations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects And in general, HVDC is also used for relatively short under sea cables. With under sea cables, the capacitive coupling and losses would be far too big for using AC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current Report comment Reply 3. Matthias says: January 28, 2024 at 8:17 am > When electricity has to be transported over long distances, HVDC > is used because loss between the AC wiring and GND is significant. And because HVAC can only be used for local climate changes :o) Report comment Reply 22. david ingebright says: January 28, 2024 at 7:27 am I have heard of cases of childhood leukemia from families living near high tension lines. There's a lot of energy going through these lines.. The effect on the human body and brain is largely unknown. I would recommend not living near these towers Report comment Reply 1. The Commenter Formerly Known As Ren says: January 28, 2024 at 1:09 pm The Denver study which showed higher cancer rates along high tension lines was disproven, but just like the "aluminum causes alzheimers" study was disproved people still think it's true. Report comment Reply 23. mgrusin says: January 28, 2024 at 7:39 am All of this reminds me of an old Chinese story about a poor man who lived above a restaurant. The man would eat his rice every day while the restaurant was cooking fish. The smell of the fish made his plain rice taste much better. When the restaurant owner found out, he was furious and had the man arrested for stealing. In court, the judge agreed that the man was stealing and would have to pay. He made the poor man present his savings; a few coins. He asked the man to pour his coins from one hand to the other several times. He then said his debt was paid and the man could go. The restaurant owner was furious and demanded to know how the debt was paid. The judge replied that the payment for stealing a smell would be the sound of money... Report comment Reply 24. Dotto says: January 28, 2024 at 7:55 am You can't thumbs up or thumb down what constitutes theft in the eyes of the law. Maybe do some case law research as I've read no argument here that hasn't seen a judge already. "I can take it because I can take it" is the basis all theft. Report comment Reply 25. Dennis A Mummert says: January 28, 2024 at 8:18 am People who placed this in the theft category didn't really think it through. You cannot steal that which is discarded and never offered for sale, nor so restricted that it should be held away by reason of safety. That being said, a valid point was brought up - how one determines the proportion of energy assigned to its proper source. Transmission line proximity will account for the bulk, but other sources are valid. And, simply because this experiment shows the magnitude of HV line leakage, don't think it's a new or different idea. It's been an electrical industry problem ever since high voltage transmission has existed. You are not stealing it, either. You've already paid for it by means of your monthly bill. It's itemized now, thanks to the busybodies in Congress who can't seem to keep their fingers out of where they don't belong, under Transmission. Every fence close to any HV line dissipates hundreds, thousands of watts every month. Read "wastes, converts to heat" for the word "dissipates". Fences close to high power radio stations will melt ice in mild winter, so it's not just power lines. Report comment Reply 1. Pat says: January 28, 2024 at 12:47 pm "You cannot steal that which is discarded" This isn't discarded. You're not capturing the far-field emissions, you're *very* in the near-field (because the reactive near-field at these frequencies is absurd). You're actually causing an additional power drain. Report comment Reply 26. NotDuck says: January 28, 2024 at 8:30 am This is capacitive coupling based on the setup. Inductive would need a loop. This is adding extra burden to the utility though it's miniscule. If who ever wants to do this to power a light, wifi router, camera... Or anything tiny. I doubt the power company would even care. The only thing is this can get super dangerous pretty quickly, as your voltage level is dictated by the dielectric and charging speed based off distance from overhead and length of fence. The capacitor in the video is a bit scary if you don't have a load dissipating the charge. Also, this fence would be super suspectable to lighting And voltage spikes as it is the weakest dielectric point between the power line and ground around. (How the whole thing is working) So, be prepared to replace at least one capacitor ever rain storm. Report comment Reply 1. I knows mah English says: January 28, 2024 at 12:16 pm upvote +1 for the use of suspectable instead of susceptible Report comment Reply 27. Lee says: January 28, 2024 at 9:15 am This falls under theft. No different then putting a magnet on the meter box with a analog meter. People tried to do this stuff back in the days of POTs lines. Building amplifiers to steal power from the phone lines. Bet the people here that says its not theft are the same people that think if there is in open electrical outlet they can plug in their charger. Report comment Reply 28. Will says: January 28, 2024 at 11:00 am It's not theft at all if it's radiated off. The energy company should have insulated the lines better. And the lines are not on their property anyway. Report comment Reply 29. Eric Mockler says: January 28, 2024 at 11:10 am The power company micro-steals from me all the time. I have a pole in my yard that feeds me and 2 neighbors. Neighbors were complaining it goes out a lot, so they replaced the pole & transformer on it. Left the old pole there, chopped my POTS line, so I can't get a land line now without some work that VZ may charge me for. Plus they cut some bushes and left all the debris all over the place, for me to pick up. The power still goes out just like it used to, I get brown-out blips where I lose half power for a second or so. So things with a wall wart keep on chugging through that, but it plays havoc with other devices and I'm pretty sure it has blown a thing or 2. Then if I design some device for water handling or whatever, I need to consider how a "brown" condition will effect things, since some of the components survive the brown out and some reboot. (the device checking water level got reset to zero, but the solenoid valve needs power from a remote controlled outlet that resets to OFF when power is interrupted. So even though the arduino tries to open the solenoid it should not have until I remotely power the outlet again, which was intended to allow me to fix the water level first. Remote outlets do not reset on brown conditions, hence flood) Good luck getting bill credit for this. Report comment Reply 30. Bob says: January 28, 2024 at 11:19 am Power companies use their money to lobby(bribe) the gov to enact laws that benefit them and not you as well as a whole mess of tricks they use to steal from ppl but collect a little of the power they are constantly radiating into the environment and you call them dirty thieves priorities I guess ...look at the ebner effect power can effect life in unusual ways we dont all ways know what we dont knows Report comment Reply 31. RT says: January 28, 2024 at 12:05 pm Can someone check my math, based on what was shared in the video: ~900V ~8 minutes (480 seconds) ~80 yards (~73 meters) 900*480/(73^2) = 3.5*10^-3 Vs/m^2 = 350 microT Is that right? If so, that's concerning given the studies highlighted in this paragraph: https://shorturl.at/vxJSZ I'm not sure how high that power line is ... maybe 80-100 feet? Given that radiation is inversely proportional to the square of the distance, would that then infer you have to live over a quarter of a mile away from that high voltage power line to be at levels that don't double your risk of cancer? Report comment Reply 1. BuriedCode says: January 28, 2024 at 2:42 pm Power lines do not emit ionising radiation, so there is no risk of cancer. And there is no cancer risk associated with magnetic fields. Report comment Reply 32. Ray says: January 28, 2024 at 12:17 pm Sadly, some responses in this thread are inaccurate. Without commenting on the legality of "intentional thief", the electrical inaccuracies can be rectified (no pun) by reading: https://www.epa.gov/radtown/ electric-and-magnetic-fields-power-lines Report comment Reply 1. Ray says: January 28, 2024 at 12:27 pm And past Hackaday: https://hackaday.com/2019/06/11/ a-field-guide-to-transmission-lines/ ... and, for more advance analysis: PDF https://engineering.purdue.edu/wcchew/ece604s21/ Lecture%20Notes/Lect11.pdf Report comment Reply 33. Clabiadh Labiadh says: January 28, 2024 at 12:19 pm try to use a high voltage transformer from lcd tv or monitor ccfl back light to lower the voltage then use a bridge rectifier with a capacitor and 5 v regulator to charge your phone , dont use old crt tv high volatge transformer as they usually contain an internal diode . Report comment Reply 34. John Williams says: January 28, 2024 at 12:34 pm A friend had a shed at the end of his garden,. The other side of the fence was a railway line with a 25Kv overhead supply. He stretched a wire between the roof finials, then brought it inside connected to one end of a 5foot fluorescent tube. If you touched the other end of the tube it lit, not very bright but enough to find to find things at night. He tried to put a switch between the tube and earth, but open or closed the lamp still lit, so he put some shutters on the window. As a light source it had one downside, the light dimmed out every time a train went past. J W Report comment Reply 1. Dude says: January 28, 2024 at 1:51 pm He brought the earth too close to the tube. An old-timey knife switch would probably have worked, since the conductors would open further apart. Report comment Reply 35. BuriedCode says: January 28, 2024 at 2:17 pm I realise that the majority of hackaday readers are not engineers, but the lack of knowledge of basic physics in this comment section is worrying. It seems like there are a few engineers arguing against a large number of libertarians who - deliberately, or otherwise - misunderstand the physics surrounding this. The analogy of "well, its just like generating power from the light that shines on your property!" is clearly wrong - if power lines "emitted" enough radiation along its length for people to pickup power, there the losses would make the current power grid useless. You're not just "pickup up" energy that would otherwise be wasted. I'm sure we're all geeks here, so why not use it as an opportunity to brush up on electrical engineering theory. Report comment Reply Leave a ReplyCancel reply Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy) This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. 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