Harvesting Electricity From High-Voltage Transmission Lines Using Fences

Is it theft?

Probably, in some cases/jurisdictions.

But technically do you think this adversely effects the electricity company? If not, it's just overspill.

One of the comments says, it does effect the electric company (why shouldn't it, energy does not come out of nowhere) and they can meassure it.

"Velemu says: 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…."

Tim Hunkin's cartoon encyclopedia (from the 80s) mentions a conviction in Canada. https://www.rudimentsofwisdom.com/pages/power%20lines.htm

Some other cases mentioned here: https://www.industrytap.com/electromagnetic-harvesters-free-...

I think the main reason the electricity companies discourage this is the hazard it presents. The 'collector' is basically a current transformer, which means:

1. If the outputs of the 'collector' go open circuit (because the rectifier/capacitor/whatever dies) the voltage at those terminals is going to rise theoretically towards infinity - insulation breakdown and discharge will occur which is likely to result in a fire.

2. The current generated by the 'collector' is going to be proportional to the transmission line current; if a ground fault occurs on the line the current in the collector winding is going to spike up to some silly level; that will probably result destruction of whatever is connected to the collector outputs and subsequently a fire.

I'm not an RF expert, but I believe this is a matter of near field vs far field.

In far field (like typical radio broadcasts), there's no "coupling" between the transmitter and receiver so the former just radiates its power and cannot distinguish whether it's being received.

In near field (RFID etc.), there is a coupling and the transmitter can definitely tell whether a receiver is present and absorbing the power.

Thus, and IANAL either, but IMHO harvesting from the near field definitely seems more like stealing, while the far field doesn't; is it stealing to effectively recover "waste energy" that would otherwise just be dissipated uselessly, and wouldn't cause any measurable increase in consumption from the power company?

This is exactly it. If you were to do this 'at scale' you'd end up having to generate more electricity to compensate for the losses, so it's clearly theft. Whether your grid coupling uses a capacitor or an inductor isn't relevant, clearly you are taking energy from the grid and is the thing that matters.

Since they operated directly under the wires, I think this is clearly a near field.

Generating power from far fields does not seem likely to get any meaningful yield. I remember my father showing me how to build a passive radio receiver using a strong sender nearby and it worked. No other power source involved but you could listen to the (weak) output. So in theory possible, but not really useful.

I suppose not. If my neighbour has a water sprinkler, it's not theft if I put a tree where it spills on my property. It's rather debatable if the strong electric fields are a disturbance to the environment and the power company should be obligated to insulate better, potentially leading to higher transmission efficiency.

What if your neighbor has a water sprinkler that is watering their own lawn, adjacent to yours, initially with no spillage, and you install a big array of fans on your property to induce air currents that cause it to start spilling over onto yours?

What would the fan be in this case?

I'm feeling like the initial analogy fit the premise better.

The fan is analogous to the antenna - it changes the RF landscape, such that a small amount of energy that would otherwise have stayed in the transmission line begins to flow into the antenna, similar to how the fan changes the air current landscape.

Is this similar to "transformer action"?

From a physics perspective, the initial analogy doesn't hold at all though.

The antenna array is actually distorting the electromagnetic field and whatever is plugged to it is actively draining power from the power line. If there's no antenna the power line lose no energy through the field[1], it's not as if you were collecting lost power.

[1] in fact, you can even say that the energy is not carried in the cables themselves but in the air surrounding the cables!

> If my neighbour has a water sprinkler, it's not theft if I put a tree where it spills on my property

From a physics perspective It's not the same thing at all: with the water sprinkler, the water is lost no matter what for your neighbors. But with the electric field, there's no power loss unless you tap into it.

To get back to your water sprinkler example, it's as if your neighbors' hosepipe got trough your garden to get to his sprinkler: you can argue that this is a environmental disturbance to your garden, but that doesn't allow you to take water from the hosepipe for your own use.

It depends, if it is considered radiation then it is "landing" on your property; so you have the right to use it, same as the radio frequencies that pass by you are legal to listen in on, such as AM or FM radio...

It isn't the same at a technical level though. AM/FM is "far field" where you are many wavelengths away and are truly emitting radiation. This is "near field" where you are with a wavelength and are coupled with the source. This is actually drawing power.

Yes.

If you unscramble the tv signal entering your home are you stealing?

Also this is taking. This isn't power the gris would have lost anyway, you're coupling it on purpose increasing the leakage

It is. Energy drain through induction, depends on conductivity of environment. By putting cables there, you increase energy loss on main line.

The same goes if the fence is there and grounded though?

No more theft than putting a solar panel under a street light that's shining on your property.

Not true, either physically or legally.

The line losses are so huge anyway, this would barely even register. Heck a few large trees close to the power line would drain more energy than this. Considering such a trivial act as "theft" is completely ridiculous.

A more accurate analogy would be old style overhead drive shafts that powered many machines in large early industrial revolution factories.

This is equivilant to throwing an extra belt over the shift to power your own machine.

There's only so much power available and as more and more machines are driven there's less and less ommph to power more.

This is literally adding "drag" to the overhead power line and decreasing what reaches the end point of transmission.

It's not equivilant to scooping up photons that were being thrown on the ground anyway.

It's not possible to abstract any sizable amount of energy this way, unless the line is kilometers long. It's the scale of the "theft" that matters, which is so trivial compared to the inherent losses in the transmission line.

The more interesting legal analogy is probably water rights. If the state decides to protect the power line, it will be illegal to draw power without permission, regardless of the physical circumstances.

But again he is barely even abstracting a single watt of energy. To take legal action for such a trivial "offense" is beyond ridiculous.

I love this so much because there's no contact, but because the voltage on the power line is so high, the inductive power is not only measurable, but significant. I have no idea what the legality of stealing power wirelessly (potentially obliviously), but it is undoubtedly cool.

I couldn't find it, but I think French courts have a jurisprudence on this already (unless it's an internal urban legend from EDF, who knows): one day a EDF (French electricity producer) who was living close to a power line built an “antenna” like this to harvest electricity, and he bragged about it. EDF sued, and the defendant claimed that he was just collecting electromagnetic waves that were leaving anyway, but EDF and the experts summoned by the court argued that it wasn't the case and that he was in fact draining power. He was found guilty because he was doing that on purpose, and even if he believed it was doing no harm, he should have checked beforehand especially since he was working in the field he should have been able to know or at least get the information about what was going on if he checked.

Very likely an offence in some jurisdictions as "abstracting electricity" [1], which is a form of theft.

There may be no physical contact but induction still causes energy to be extracted from the line.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstracting_electricity

I doubt anyone would prosecute over it, it would get thrown out of court because it's so petty? No worse than littering, etc.

depends on how much the energy stolen is worth?

There is a housing estate near me that has these lines going right through it. I often wonder what the impact of that is on the people that live there.

The main advantage is that you don't need to pay for electricity for lighting.

Now the disadvantages: most electrical equipment and the human body are not build to function in a continous (as in always present) electromagnetic field.

During the Dot-com bubble, I remember a startup in Germany that placed boxes under high-voltage transmission lines to measure the current and sold that data to analysts.

Never heard of them again, so I guess in the long run it was either cheaper to buy that data.

Network frequency changes and fluctuates around 50hz. This change is random and unique. It is also captured on video/audio recording as background hum.

This data is quite valuable. You can reconstruct exact time (and region) when any video was taken.

The police keep track of this, and it can be used to validate audio recording evidence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_network_frequency_a...

There is a lot of interest at the moment in monitoring lines. The capacity of a line can change due to things like weather conditions. The capacity is rated based on a conservative set of assumptions. Sensors mean that they could send more power safely. This could help connect more renewable power.

People on that forum are trying to call this "stealing", which is ridiculous. This involves less that 1 watt of power. The law should not concern itself with trifles. It's more of a health and safety issue than any "theft".

They don't seem to get the nuance of the situation and can only see it in terms of black and white and following "the rules". I've personally seen this behavior a lot in the amateur radio community, where people were harassed or threatened for breaking some minor rule.

You should see what hooligans in Belarus and Russia get up to, now that is a legitimate problem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4zO2gB70ps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqRT7J86rco

people think copying files can also be stealing which is even dumber

love those crazy russian youtubers, they're always so reckless... they're fun to watch from a safe distance

If you attach a load to an electrical line, then you are transferring power from the line for your use. This power is then no longer available for paying customers to use.

The load in question here is an inductive load, coupled through the air to the transmission line through well known physical principles.

If caught, you could be charged with theft for sure.

This is regardless of what people are doing or not doing in Belarus or Russia.

If you harvest loss that was happening anyway then it isn't theft; you can't be charged for theft for something someone else threw away.

That’s not really true, you’re not harvesting “loss”. When you use that electromagnetic field to induce a current, you’re creating another electromagnetic field that opposes the first one, and which resists the current in the high voltage line.

I’m not saying this is stealing, but it’s certainly not “harvesting loss”.

Well the ground is creating that exact opposing electric field anyway. If trees were planted to the same height as the wire, then the loss to the electric company is the same.

He's just in effect increasing the height of the ground slightly and tapping the potential difference. You might as well park a car underneath it, attach a wire between the body and ground, and get same or better results, because the surface area is larger (capacitively coupled).

Yes, caught for "stealing" 63 milliwatts of electricity, from charging the 88uF capacitor in that video from 426V to 489V over a period of 40 seconds.

If that was running all year round it would consume 0.6kWh of electricity, which is probably capacitive losses to the surroundings and would be lost anyway.

If it ever got to court, it would be thrown out instantly.

This is the same mentality behind thousands of bullshit complaints to the FCC by radio amateurs because someone broke a petty rule somewhere, and it's why I want nothing to do with the amateur radio hobby at all. The vast majority of them the FCC ignores.

Inductively. You're not actually splicing into the line, or damaging the equipment to retrieve the power. It would be the same as putting a rain barrel to capture water runoff from a public road.

which is, in fact, illegal in several western us states

I think what drives some of the comments that it is illegal is a little bit of righteous indignation. "How dare you get free electricity, that's illegal because I'm not getting free electricity." It's kind of fake moral outrage

Also power trips (especially by radio hams) and territoriality (impinging on "their" spectrum). It really is animal behavior there, people are supposed to be better than that.

Especially when the "offense" is trivial. If there's deliberate high powered jamming going on, it's a completely different matter.

I can understand that, I'm a ham, if someone was doing something that was interfering with my station then I would be unhappy… Especially if it was deliberate. If it's not intentional, then, I really don't have much room to complain. I should better insulate.

Those fences could be used for electrofarming. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2304360-can-electric-fi...

tl;dr

Electricity kills all bugs and insects good and bad, lowering pesticide use. They also increase water evaporation, forcing plants to grow faster.

So, what about the electricity affecting something like a cochlear implant, would this be considered an environmental impact for deaf ppl via pollution?

An artist used this effect to create a display of fluorescent light tubes.

http://www.infoniac.com/environment/artist-created-network-o...

This exam question is based on a news story about a farmer using a coil of wire to power his farm.

https://users.physics.unc.edu/~deardorf/phys25/rwp/exam1rwps...

That's so cool! I think it could absolutely be harvested. Of course, the government will probably pass a law or regulation that you can't stand or sit, or have any whatever close to the lines, but for now, I don't see really any reason why you can't do this. It's like any byproduct that is being actively discarded.

I want to try this and see if it could charge a battery.