Insane (probably stupid) theoretical question

15 years ago

First I would like to state that I am not going to do this.

I have no way of doing this. I have no place to do it.

It's got to be illegal not to mention dangerously stupid.

It just ain't gonna happen. But I have always wondered....

Many years ago I went to school with a boy whose house

was right next to some high voltage transmission towers.

These were the lines that carried power over the mountains.

I got to thinking about this....(uh-oh, here comes trouble).

Those lines have got to have a very powerful emf around them.

So, if I was to consider the lines the primary side, and

place a coil of wire under them as the secondary side,

would I have in effect created a transformer that I could

get power from and use for my mad scientist laboratory?

This fluff-for-brains Pooh Bear wants to know.

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Comments (15)

billhart
15 years ago
I've heard stories from people who had heard of people who did it. I'm not sure if it is an urban legend or truth.

Any power obtained this way would be very poorly regulated, would require considerable investment in the "secondary", would have to be pretty close to the lines (a few yards?) to get significant output, and would get you in a lot of trouble as soon as the power company noticed it.
petey_racer
15 years ago
"and would get you in a lot of trouble as soon as the power company noticed it."

They wouldn't notice if you painted it with invisible paint.
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There were similar stories when clear channel radio stations which used to carry 500,000 watts and could be heard from coast to coast such as WJR in Detroit and WBN in Chicago. The story went that people who lived very close to these stations were pulling current from the radio signals to power their homes.
brickeyee
15 years ago
All you need is a large enough coil area correctly oriented.

You magnetically couple off the line, just like any other transformer.

It has been done, but the POCO usually notices the excessive losses in the line and goes looking for the 'leak.'
billhart
15 years ago
>All you need ...

That will get you some kind of power. Wouldn't you also need a mechanism to regulate the voltage in order to do anything useful with it? The primary is going to have a variable current in it depending on the line's present loading. The voltage across the "primary" will vary accordingly since it is in series with the megawatt load, not across a constant voltage.

The best model to think about is a clamp-on ammeter waved in the neighborhood of a current-carrying conductor (not inside the clamp). You will get a small reading but not a consistent one.
billhart
15 years ago
There is some pseudo science/mysticism out there on the web about related topics. Search terms like "free energy".

People have built machines (complicated in some cases) for the purpose of intercepting power. Some people claim to have tapped into "aetherial energy" and others say it is sucking power from transmission lines. See the link.

Wikipedia says the Mythbusters program touched on this topic, but the segment dealing with coils near power lines was only shown in an outtakes segment.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pseudoscience
brickeyee
15 years ago
"That will get you some kind of power. Wouldn't you also need a mechanism to regulate the voltage in order to do anything useful with it? The primary is going to have a variable current in it depending on the line's present loading. The voltage across the "primary" will vary accordingly since it is in series with the megawatt load, not across a constant voltage.

The best model to think about is a clamp-on ammeter waved in the neighborhood of a current-carrying conductor (not inside the clamp). You will get a small reading but not a consistent one."

The coil is much larger than a clamp on ammeter.
Pickup goes with the square of the number of turns in the coil.

You would need to regulate, but that is not as hard as it sounds with just a little electronics.

It would be a very dangerous installation.
Pooh Bear
Original Author
15 years ago
You mean to tell me there are actually people
out there that have thought about this besides me??
And people out there that have tried it???

OMG!!! And they say I have fluff for brains.

Thanks for the informative answers.

Pooh Bear
steve_in
15 years ago
This reminds me of the video of the guy in the metallic suit that climbs out onto the high voltage wires from a helicopter to inspect them. You could get him to put the coil up there for you.
Ron Natalie
15 years ago
The largest AM stations are only 50,000 (not 500,000) and the field strength is negligable. Getting underneath power transmission lines with a long enough coupling might work.

This reminds me of the video of the guy in the metallic suit that climbs out onto the high voltage wires from a helicopter to inspect them. You could get him to put the coil up there for you.

My favorite is the quote "There's only three things I've ever been afraid of: heights, electricity and women...and I'm married too."
brickeyee
15 years ago
"The largest AM stations are only 50,000 (not 500,000) and the field strength is negligable."

Depends on how close to the transmitter you are, but at longer distances the e-field is measured in microvolts/meter.
chgojack
15 years ago
Back to the theoretical - presumably the lines are three phase. Wouldn't the phase difference come close to canceling any useful induced secondary? Unless you got really close to one phase and far from the other two...
billhart
15 years ago
A relevant figure is the ratio of distance between phase conductors divided by distance from pickup coil to nearest phase conductor. Yes, that means it would have to be relatively close.
texasredhead
15 years ago
Evidently some of you are not aware of the size of radio signals in the golden days of radio in the 30s and 40s. You could drive across the county while listening to WLW in Cincinnati.
pjb999
15 years ago
This all sounds rather like Tesla's plan for wireless, broadcast electricity. He had a pilot program running (successfully I believe) but his investors shut it down and dismantled it when they realised how easy it would be to steal power, basically a kind of lightning rod and you'd be in business.

Had his model taken off who knows, but there's a good chance the EMR wouldn't hav been healthy.

Insane (probably stupid) theoretical question

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