Fences sucking power from under HV transmission lines

True story... More than 50 years ago, when I was just a kid, the owner of a local oil field welding and machine shop got sued in Federal Court for "stealing" electricity from the 240KV power lines which passed over his property, by way of using a homemade induction coil mounted on a pole. Which in turn was wired into his electrical system, and which had been powering his business for more more than 20 years already. The court ruled that he could not be sued for taking advantage of natural physics, and dismissed the case on day one. His business continued to thrive for another 30 years until his death. Shit you not.

I knew a man who was in charge of maintaining lines like these. His crew informed him that a property owner had installed an array of wires on his property near the towers. They thought that he was stealing electricity. Management said that if he was smart enough to capture the electricity that they were losing, he was entitled to it.

THIS is what I come to Youtube for. Thank you for your presentation.

Back in the 70s my friends and I discovered an odd phenomenon. If we were barefoot and touched an unpainted spot on the house gutter downspout with our finger nail we got a mild shock. But only sometimes. Then we figured it out. The guttering was galvanized steel. If it rained, any dead leaves in the gutter would produce a mild acid and turn the gutter into a battery.

As an electrician, I was called out to a site where a crew was setting up a manufactured home under high voltage lines. The set up crew was getting shocked every time they touched the metal frame of the house. My volt meter showed 110 volts AC from the frame to ground. I put ground rods at each corner and wished them luck. Would hate to be living in that house...

I'm a fencing contractor and I can say that I have put up several fences up under overhead power lines and sometime it will shock to piss out of you touching the fence.

In the early '80s, my friends house had powerlines just like that going over their house. The rain gutters and down spouts had a significant electrical charge. Us neighborhood kids loved pushing each other into them or better yet, tricking anyone that didn't know better into zapping themselves. It was strong enough to arc off any grass or weeds that touched the downspouts.

An afterthought to my earlier post. In the late 1970's I owned a cablevision system. Our main trunk line to town from our headend on a mountain was 18 miles long. It was buried along a highway, underneath high voltage electric lines. Each of the 36 amplifiers on the trunk line operated on 60 volts AC, which was duplexed onto the cablevision line, along with the TV and FM channels. We had power supplies every mile or so, which injected 60 volts into the cablevision line, and the further you got from a power supply, the lower the voltage. At around 38 volts we'd install another power supply - and back up to 60 volts again. But amplifiers kept blowing. I mean, like burned up. Since the amps were in underground volts we were perplexed, since they were secure from grass fires. So out with the voltmeter. Surprisingly, we had between 100 and 400 volts on the line - despite putting only 60 volts into the thing to start with. We went through one hell of a lot of amplifiers before we finally figured out that we were getting inductive voltage from the overhead power line! At first we added light bulbs to each amplifier, which glowed brightly and scared traffic. And they would glow bright or dim, as the current load on the overhead wires varied from time time time. Finally, our engineer came up with a fix. A 'crowbar' which used an SCR diode that would short to ground any voltage over 63 volts. So the power line induced voltage would be bled off to ground. Those diodes would get hot like an electric stove element, to the point where we had to heat sink them to stop them from burning out - that's how much power we were getting from the power line induction.

as a retired telephone linesman, I've dealt with EMF many times and to all kinds of degrees.The worst was when I was placing a temporary aerial cable under a large transmission line.I was in bucket, and blue spark started jumping between different metal parts of the bucket. I came down and grounded my truck, Still sparks jumping. I ended up finishing the job with hi voltage rubber gloves on, as I couldn't touch anything without getting zipped.

I remember back in the 70’s a farmer ran lines under power lines on his property and the power company sued him for stealing power. The FARMER WON and powers part of his place with the electricity that’s lost to the atmosphere.

As a kid our neighbor would walk under similar transmission lines holding a fluorescent light tube over his head. Sometimes it would flicker, sometimes it would really light up. Forgot all about it until I saw your video. Thanks.

Power company: "There is no health safety issue with overhead power lines." Same power company: "Hey, you can't use power from the air. That's our power!"

Instead of shorting a capacitor out to discharge it, use a 20K to 50K, 10 watt resistor across the cap terminals and it will slowly and safely discharge the cap in a few minutes. Remember once a cap is discharges and you remove the short, the cap may very well regain a charge over time. So leave the resistor attached to the cap when not in use.

Here's a neat test to try as we, myself and two fellow electricians in the mid 80's did. We grabbed 8' T-12 fluorescent lamps and wrapped the one end of them with aluminum foil. Then we held them in our hands straight up under similar 230kv transmission lines. They lit up like they were in fixture.

Very interesting experiment! During the time the cap was charging from 186V to 331V, the average current was 0.19 milliamps. [ i=C x delta(v)/delta(t) ] This raw current at the open end of the wire will not kill you but the capacitor itself can deliver enough current to be dangerous. I would wear gloves around this circuit. A comment below mentions how HV lines affected horses. I've heard of other cases when HV affected cows and horses. Their feet are always touching the ground and an AC current flows through their body.

I don't know why this popped up in my recommendations but I'm glad it did.........was really surprised by the amount of juice you were able to store.

I work for an electrical utility. I was recently installing new equipment under the overhead lines while working on an insulated fiberglass ladder. I had one lead from my volt-meter to ground while holding the other lead and the induced electricity into me would go up about 125 volts per step on the ladder. It was interesting to see the constant bug zapper action arcing when I held the lead about 1/8th inch from the grounded building next to me.

Retired land surveyor. Whenever we surveyed under hi tension lines and set up the transit you could feel that it was energized because it would 'bite' when you touched it and if you grabbed hold of it it would 'buzz' in your hands.

You can get significant induction voltages from much less than 230kv if you are close enough! I first figured that about 20 years ago while waiting for a train. It was a rainy day, so I had my umbrella up. I was stood on the platform and kept feeling this zapping sensation in my right hand and a faint buzzing noise. I looked up and there were little sparks around the spokes of my umbrella and as I adjusted my grip so as to only hold the plastic handle there was visible arcing about 4-5mm onto my hand. 😵 I was amazed! This was coming from the 25kv traction supply lines about 8ft above my head.

Inductive resonance is a real thing and can be tapped. I found this out building solar powered electric fencing in Oklahoma. Those powerlines play hell with the control boards in fencing and we found out that we didn't need to power them up if the fence ran under those lines. Free electric fence power.....enough to deter horses and cows from going though. For fun walk underneath a high tension line with a fluorescent tube and hold it over your head in the dark. Free lighting !