Stealing Electricity (The safe way)

In this video i build a coil that's effectively a huge loopstick antenna with tuning capacitors to resonate at 60 Hz, which is mains frequency in North America. The coil can generate over 5 volts near running appliances or power cables, and charge a capacitor or light up some LEDs. It works by collecting the small magnetic flux leakage that every AC device produces.

The power generated is less than 100 μW in most cases, so it can't do anything very exciting, but it's really interesting to stand under a power line and see a capacitor charge from its leak. The biggest limiting factor seems to be that transmission lines which have opposite phases very close to each other result in a near-zero magnetic field at a distance from canceling out most of each others magnetic flux.

Some figures:

Coil Wire Gauge: 28 AWG
Number of turns: ~12,000
Coil Inductance: 28.1 H
Capacitor Value: 250 nF

Parts:

3 lb 28 AWG Magnet Wire:

Music:

Kevin MacLeod - George Street Shuffle
Kevin MacLeod - Groove Groove

[mryoung]

When I was in my teens, I'd ride my bicycle down this hill directly under some very large distribution lines. When it rained, I would always get zapped by the screw on my brake lever.... That made me want to become an electrician

[petec]

Heard a story a very long time ago. A farmer or rancher had a field outlined in barbed wire, looped all the way back to the main gate. The story goes that one day he put his hands on both sides of the gate touching each end of the wire and discovered a shock. Don't recall any statement of voltages or anything else other than a shock. The story goes on to state that the power company had placed power lines NEAR his property. In court he claimed he was trying to dissipate the charge by using some sort of load, be it a light or a pump or something else. The power company wanted to charge him for stealing their electricity. And for those who don't know, pulling power from a magnetic field DOES take away power from the transmission line. In the end the court decided that if the power company didn't like the loss of electricity they could move their power lines some stated distance away from his property.

After watching your video - by the way, thanks for an excellent presentation - I find it hard to believe the story I just related. Think I heard that back in the late 1970's. Like I said, it's been some times since hearing that story. What comment do you have if any?

[henrydriedger]

You could use this to find underground or in wall wires. Just run a decent load on the other end and you could potentially trace the entire path.

[bozosplayhouse]

Years ago at a local landfill there were several boxes of these 8 or 10' florescent tubes removed from a supermarket that was being renovated. A couple friends and I decided to visit in the evening looking for bike parts for our go-carts.. when we noticed something flickering in the garbage pits.. was it some sort of radioactive stuff? Well, I figured it out right away, but my friends were losing their minds! Eventually I let them in on what was happening with the tubes and the 500KV transmission lines 60' overhead. We left that place with a lot of people left scratching their heads! Those tubes were up in trees and some buried one end in the dirt.. we had the service road under the power lines almost lit up for a 1/4 mile.. it looked eerie, because from a mile away they randomly flickered in pink, yellow and green light.

[sbalogh]

A few decades ago a friend of mine lived about 200 metres from an AM Radio transmitting tower. He had run loops of wire around his fence line and used the electricity generated to trickle charge a car battery which he used as part of his Ham radio setup. It seemed to keep the battery constantly topped up. I think he managed to save about $1 a month in electricity costs. 😀

[davenorman]

I know a guy who had a junk yard with a high tension (11kv) line running over it..he parked an old mobile crane beneath the lines with a longitudinally wound coil made using a large cast iron pipe as the armature he used a tapping switch connected to the coil tappings at the end of the pipe to correct the output voltage..the junkyard run on free but poorly regulated 240V for many years...he never got caught, the system was removed from service in 1993 when he sold the junkyard after almost 20 years..I got to see how the coil was wound when it was being scrapped (a lot of copper) It is a design I will never site now sits vacant and overgrown.

[xAF]

Back in high school, using an old aircraft VHF dipole on a broomstick that feed a very unoptimized coil, we used to pull some 3/4 inch arcs under a pair of large 750kV transmission lines that cross through my town. I stupidly fried my first multimeter trying to "measure" the induced voltage, it literally screamed with a brief continuity beep as it died - still haunts me. 😅 All the contraptions we made to pull power off those lines were just goofy experimental guesses. We barely understood Ohms Law and knew nothing of the difference between E and H fields. We'd always bring long fluorescent bulbs with us because they readily glow with a neat throbbing pattern from the strong ELF magnetic fields under those high tension lines. Good times! :-)

[samTollefson]

Back in the 70s, there were these fellows that had an arrangement involving 55-gallon drums with wire coiled around them set up under high-tension power lines that ran through the hills in the middle of nowhere that powered a still. Since there was no fire, I don't believe they ever got caught!
The only reason I knew about it was I lived on a small farm on a ridge top a few miles away and once in a while on a still summer night, I would get a whiff of that distinctive smell of the mash cooking. In those days, everybody kept their mouths shut!

[TrapperAaron]

My grandpa had a rig that pulled power from right before his meter. He had a master switch in the basement that would switch between the meter and the 2 120vac lines that feed the meter. He kept quiet about it and we didn't find out about it until we were replacing the old screw in fuse panel, w a proper □D breaker panel. Even when they put in a new "smart meter" no one said a word about the extra cables running thru the meter box. We don't use it any longer as the wires are old (but very heavy gauge) aluminum type, and we did not connect them to the new panel. The switch is a huge knife style switch from a steel refinery where he used to work. I've been thinking about using it hooked up to a genny to disconnect mains and switch to 220vac genny. Luckily the transformer is on a power supply line located in a back field surrounded by about 10 acres of wood lot and a .22lr is just right for blowing the fuse to the transformer, and power company has to have us open gates for access. So rewiring if needed is relatively safe. This is in nw Arkansas and most of our neighbors have the same setup. It's been 4 generations of my family there now, and we have never been questioned about it. It used to drive my grandmother crazy because he would switch to the free power legs when she was running the stove and 3 ovens! Wich would reset her radio/timer. I remember one Xmas he bought her 4 wind-up timers for the kitchen 3 for ovens 1 for stove top. I thought she would be pissed but she LOVED THEM! I don't think she even ever asked why he would goto basement every afternoon and then the power would drop out and come back on one fuse at a time. Original don't ask don't tell policy lol. And since all the neighbors had same system the power company must have just assumed the people on that rural route were just very very frugal. Also most neighbors still run wood burning stoves for heat in winter. He also had a hot water pre heater (an old hot water tank on its side with insulation removed, painted matte black and a curved aluminum reflector behind it). In summer u didnt even need the real water heater running and in winter it had a bypass valve plumbed in (permanently) w a set of coils that ran thru the sides of the chimney that was fed by the wood burner. There is still a black bakelite dial (pulse) telephone on the wall, it no longer works and says property of bell systems on a plate on the back, apparently back in the day the phone company owned the actual phones and charged a small fee to rent them. Until the early/mid 1990s it was a party line. To call them I would dial their number let it ring 4x hang up and then call back, and my grandma would answer. On occasion if you were jaw flapping a long time a neighbor would pickup their phone and politely ask you to clear the line so they could make a call. Thank god for good country neighbors! They have always been like extended family members. Which is a good thing to have when you live on a mountain 45 min from town on a dirt road. No one drives 4wd bullshit. If road washed out or became un-passable u just stuck the triangle 🔺️ on back of tractor and took that to town (the tractors are all 4wd or tracked). The main road is paved now and they have a spur road that goes directly into town and the highway. Also pro-tip if u don't want to pay high fuel prices u can buy red dyed farm fuel (diesel is red gasoline is green) and run it thru a 30 gallon drum packed w charcoal (broken up hardwood is the best and the guy w the charcoal converter (a giant oven) basically gives away the fines (tiny peices and dust) if u help him empty the oven and clamps (a clamp is a big hole in the ground that u stack wood into then cover w mud/clay to make charcoal). Can't wait to go back this fall!

[Scrogan]

Really fighting that inverse cube law there. If you aim for AM radio stations you might be able to get more power, even though they’re much further away. A mW or two is enough for a low-power microcontroller circuit waking from sleep with a PFET circuit running off a capacitor, energy harvesting is real neat for distributed sensor applications.

[stanleydenning]

My father was an electrical engineer back in the 1940s and 1950s. He later opened a TV repair shop in California in the early 60s. He told me a story about a time when he strung wires under a high-tension powerline that ran across his backyard in Illinois. I don't know the details. Sorry. Long story, short. He powered the house for two years before the power company found out about it. He was a smart man. He designed equipment for the old AM music stations of that era. He invented many circuits for Ham radio operators. He even did some stuff for the Military. When he got caught with his " Free Energy" equipment, he got sued and had to pay back two years of estimated electric usage. Besides being an electrical genius, he was an asshole.

[SeattlePioneer]

I occasionally gave some casual thought to these issues when reading electrical theory, but it was very nice to see them demonstrated experimentally, and with explanations I could more or less understand.

The comments were interesting as well, and sometimes a hoot!

[derekferguson]

I discovered early in my career as an electrician that a neon screwdriver was pretty useless at telling you whether a circuit was live or dead. If the wire you are testing ran through trunking with other cables the neon would light even though there was no voltage. Also if you remove the lid of a trunking and hold the screwdriver next to the insulated wires it lights up. After discovering this I threw the neon screwdriver in the bin but did wonder about any potential uses.

[DJDiarrhea]

Bros microphone is powered by his neighbours microwave

[Kohlenstoffkarbid]

Since you are working with low frequency of 60 Hz, you could use a core of laminated iron. It would increase the inductivity per turn. In exchange you could reduce the amount of turns and take thicker wires to reduce the resistance. This could increase the sensitivity of the coil by alot.

[jarrodvsinclair]

My grandfather had a light in a shed in his field that was powered by the top wire of the fence that ran about 150 feet under a 15kv powerline. It was a low power bulb but it did light up and stayed lit all the time

[anothersquid]

The power loss from the mains is detectable by the power company. They can even localize it. So while it's fun for lighting up an LED or powering some small device, if you draw anything significant this way, they'll come down on you pretty hard.

That said, I think that if they don't want people receiving their magnetic fields, they should be on the hook for keeping the fields on their own property.

[flagmichael]

You clearly put a lot of work into the project and the video - kudos!

Ah, but the dangers of EMFs!! I started at a Fortune 100 electric company as a comm tech in 1984. Very soon after I started the warning came out of electrical workers having double the risk of two nasty brain cancers - gliomas and astrocytomas - compared to average Joes. D'oh! The finding, from data mining in various studies, drove two decades of EMF regulations, particularly in Europe. Around the turn of the century a much larger study found no correlation; the previous one had been a data cluster.
That made me feel better. As I became more senior more and more of my job centered around protection systems (think of circuit breakers that coordinate with the far end of 200 mile lines) for 69KV to 500KV. The three 500KV substations in my AOR were becoming very familiar to me. Touching anything grounded - poles and fences - in most of the yard produced an unpleasant shock. Doing it under the capacitor banks produced a memorable experience!

Now in retirement, I am enjoying great health with no sort of

[stephenrocks]

Many years ago we were camping in The “los Algodones” sand dun dunes. And within 200 feet of some very high voltage transmission lines feeding San Diego from Arizona I was able to light a 4 ft fluorescent lamp by holding one hand in the palm of my hand and the other simply in the air.
By the next day/ nite there were other campers running coax cable to their camps.
Needless to say, after some of them wiring their whole fixture up, several got tagged. By the weekend there was chain-link and Barbed wire fencing around the towers.
lol

[ekummel]

A friend had some high voltage power lines running across his property (93K I believe) and I told him to do something similar. He attached it to the end of about 30 feet of bamboo lashed together. It was anchored to the roof is a shed he had standing out in the field under the power lines. The bamboo pole naturally waves side to side and it generates enough voltage to power some LED bulbs and a WiFi access point!