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Re: Power source

A radar technician friend of mine told me a story of a guy using induction 
coils (or some such) to draw power out of the radar that swept over his house 
from the base next door. Apparently they found out due to the LARGE radar 
shadow that spread out from his house.

When they checked it out the roof cavity of his house was layered with coils 
and the resulting power was fed into batteries to supplement his house supply.

Aaron Blackman
Information Systems
Phone: 9482-7305
Email: 
---------- Original Text ----------

From: "Steve Mann" <>, on 29/11/99 2:20 PM:

> Heh.  Seriously, the reason that the power company doesn't like people
> to bury coils near power lines is because it actually produces a drain
> on the power company's lines.  The energy around power lines isn't
> radiated away in the sense of a light bulb.  
> 
> See, when you have an oscillating current, as one does in all AC
> circuits (like power lines), you also have an oscillating magnetic field
> generated around that current.  As the current goes through its cycle,
> energy is alternately stored in and recovered from the magnetic field,
> as the power travels along towards paying customers.  
> 
> If, however, you put a coil nearby, some of the energy in the magnetic
> field gets "recovered" into *your* wires, which of course implies that
> less energy is recovered by the power line, producing a net drain on the
> power company's supply.  (Note that the coil operates in the same way
> that a transformer does).
> 
> So you see, power companies are quite right to get annoyed when somebody
> buries a few coils near their high-tension lines  --it costs them money.
> 
> 
> Shane Norris wrote:
> > 
> > So does this mean that legally your required to pay the power company's
> > for any tumors you aquier as a direct result or are these free?
> > (apologies for the sarcasm, ill shut up now)
> >         Regards
> >                 Shane Norris
> >         (() || ());

it is true indeed that an antenna, loop, or the like, does drain power
(in the same way that a transformer draws more power from the primary when
the secondary is loaded down), but that's still no excuse for the power
company to irradiate people with power against their will.

shane's got a good point!

a while back some folks were even talking about setting up dummy loads,
just to waste away power and create an incentive for those producing
radiation to back off.

such dummy loads, it was felt, would provide an incentive for the power
companies to use proper shielding.

i knew one person living on the top floor of an apartment who was angered
by the close proximity of cellular transmitters to his living space, and
he was thinking of putting up receive antennas with dummy loads to reduce
the efficiency of their site.

steve
http://wearcam.org
http://eyetap.org

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