“Variation in voltage between the ends” is caused by electric field, not magnetic field.

‘“Variation in voltage between the ends” is caused by electric field, not magnetic field.’
by pedantic

if my physics is correct the power lines have an electric field flowing along their length but emit a magnetic field perpendicular to the line that can induce a electric field in another conductive object

Okay, all of you. It’s not the decreasing potential from the line. The line has AC current. That current is both electrical and magnetic in nature.
The changing current sets up a fluxing magnetic field around the line. Loops inside the field experience a current. That lights the bulbs.
In return the current in the bulbs emits a magnetic field that affects the power line. This restricts the change of current in the line, shifting the power factor. The power company has to deal with this. It’s something like theft, afaik.

AC isn’t “both electrical and magnetic”. All current creates a magnetic field. Nor is it creating a “fluxing” field – the field itself is called the magnetic flux.

Magnetic effect has nothing to do here, because there isn’t a complete inductive loop through the tubes. To steal power from the wires through induction, you would need to have a wire running parallel to the power lines.

What you see here is only the potential difference between the ground and the wirings that carry several hundred thousand volts. That easily amounts to hundreds of volts per meter of potential difference. There’s a constant leakage current in power lines due to the fact that the air conducts a tiny amount of current. It’s basically a large leaking capacitor.

These tubes contain low pressure gas which provides a lower resistance path than the surrounding air, which concentrates the leakage current through them instead of the surrounding air and it actually increases the leakage slightly.

it wouldn’t matter one bit if the wires were carrying AC or DC.

I just had a thought. I’ve heard of a lot of weird ways to be ‘green’ but I’ve never seen anyone take advantage of this effect. Do you think it might be possible to power a house with this?

it’s technically theft, since they’re removing energy from the electrical grid without being metered/paying. It’s not “green” in that you’re recycling or using “waste” energy.
The load of this field wouldn’t be very significant w.r.t. the high tension lines, though.

wait, isn’t that energy being wasted anyway or would it actually affect their lines? I somehow got the idea that these rows of light were just making the existing field visible, not pulling power from powerlines.

Though some thought the display was made to bring people’s attention to possible hazards of living near the lines

i wish that i could post a facepalm picture in respect to this statement

if you run the calculations, the magnetic field generated by the lines is less than the magnetic field of the earth

MoF – “you’re essentially stealing power from them.”

You really ought to read the previous comments before posting. The lines leak current, through the air, to ground, as Einomies said. The lamps are only accelerating this process, not creating it, it is not induction.

“That may be true, but living in constant contact with that much EM is unlikely to be healthy.”

Better start living in one then, because the Earth’s magnetic field is gonna FUCK YOU UP!

“take a compass under one and see what happens, it will still point to magnetic north with no perceptible interference”

Well it probably wouldn’t move even if you put it right next to the wire since it is an AC field.

The fact that this energy “would be wasted anyway” is neither here nor there and will not stop energy companies filing cease and desist against anyone who does it.

The water pipes leak, sticking a tap on one and watering your garden is still stealing.

The earth´s magnetic field has a huge difference to this AC-electromagnetic field: it is not alternating 60 times per second, but rather turning slow (once every thousand years or so). Given that there are a lot of people living near powerlines of this strength, science knows almost nothing about the long term effects of this environment. Just statistical data with an outcome that a lot of people would not like to see.

However, by changing the dielectric between line and ground you are increasing “the leak” of energy, therefore “stealing”. Ideally you would be using a copper wire or coil as near as possible to the power line to have maximum effect.

Tubes like these need around 90 Volts outside of an field to keep emitting light. But here they omit a starter circuit (supplying the initial lightning bolt and heating the anode/cathode), as the electrons in the tube are accelerated by the field alone and affect the inner coating to emit light.

There have been suits addressed to people lighting their garden with wireless power from an FM transmitter, too.

“I just had a thought. I’ve heard of a lot of weird ways to be ‘green’ but I’ve never seen anyone take advantage of this effect. Do you think it might be possible to power a house with this?”

No it wouldn’t…it’s not green in the first place, but just because it’d be interesting to figure out, let’s do a theoretical. A typical home has a minimum 100 amp service entry, with 200 amp services not uncommon. Assuming the field directly below a high voltage line is on the order of 10 microteslas according to a Google search result I found, some quick and dirty Lenz Law tells me that if you had a 1 meter square “antenna” you’d have to have nearly 60,000 turns of wire (about 14 miles) to get 220 volts, and if you’re going for 100 amps that means wire gauge in the single digits (according to awg, you’d use 2 gauge wire for transmission). that’s about a cubic meter of copper, or nearly 9000 kilograms. i certainly wouldn’t want to foot the bill for that much copper.

@whomever thinks the fields are wasted energy:

they’re not wasted energy because they’re inductive losses. inductors create a magnetic field when they have current passing through them. when the power is cut off, the field collapses and the power is returned to the circuit. the magnetic field is just a holding place for the energy the inductor has stored.

the fields are there because current is flowing through the power lines…that’s just a fact of nature. it’s kind of like paying a security deposit on an apartment…the money is yours but not in your hands, and as long as you want to stay in that apt that money will not be available to you. if you move out, you get that money back and can spend it as you please. same for the power company…the field is there because of physics…it’s a loss in the system that they just have to accept since fields are thrown when you’re passing current through a conductor. it’s still their power, and if they ever turn off the line it’ll be returned to them and they can do with it what they please (sell). that’s why power lines have capacitor banks…to deal with our inductive loads being turned off and power being returned to the utility company (which they charge you for, actually).

taking energy from those fields is no different than taking leaking water from a main, as cynic so eloquently put it. ab also mentioned power being siphoned from fm transmitters; my physics professor told us about someone doing that, and got caught when the transmitter technicians noticed their fields were really out of whack. i’ve also heard from my electromagnetics professor that people have been caught burying wires under power lines and picking up on the field that way. the point i’m making is that when you do that, the power company (or transmitter company for fm) notice additional losses. you’re not taking free, wasted energy because you can’t just grab energy from nothing, that’s physically impossible. when you interact with those fields you’re taking energy from the system, which is noticeable, which is my entire point.

“there is a push towards dc transmission lines because they are more efficient”

uh…what? are you sure your name isn’t thomas edison?

@aficionado

i see what you’re talking about with long distance, using hi voltage dc…interesting stuff.

as far as why, though…when you say frequency, do you mean phase? i’m not a power engineer, but i can’t think of how frequency would be changed over long distances but i certainly can think of how phase would be difficult to deal with.

photoshop.

That’s a bit of exaggeration there in the photograph.

omg, google it or shut up. i think its the kool-aid man’s tears that light the bulbs.
no no
give me a second, i can make more wild speculations!

I went to college and i covered this in one of my electrical theory classes, an yes it is stealing.

@aficionado
dc power transmission is impractical, it has far higher power loss over same distances and you cannot efficiently step up and down voltages.

And on a more serious note, when i stand under one of these it makes the metal plate in my head hurt, i am not shure if im conducting or resonating…. i just try not to stand under the transmission lines for emf leakage concerns anyways besides the pain.

Ah, I would love to see a photo of this taken from above. Maybe you could see field lines in the intensity of the lamps.

Reminds me of the story ( true? )about the Scotman that put a coil under the HP-lines running accross this cow pasture… the power company sued him for stealing power. I think they lost the suit

I can’t help but take a look at the picture and think of how much light pollution this “hack project” must have caused, and will cause.

The bulbs add an extra impedance, albeit a small one, to the power lines, causing a dissipation of power beyond what is “leaked” anyway, and is therefore stealing.

Power companies have actually prosecuted or at the very least tracked down people in the past for doing this, this sort of display is nothing new. There have been stories of people lighting their houses using this concept only to be caught by the power company during random field inspections.

“All i know is I’m not comfortable standing under those lines. God did not evolve me to conduct ac current or dc with out bad things happening. I’m not a doctor or a scientist, but I’m going to guess that microwave, xray,gamma,uv and all sorts of high frequency em radiation at low to high intensity is a bad thing in the long term. How high will the cancer rate go?”

you’re obviously not a doctor or scientist because your viewpoint has absolutely no scientific rigor and it makes me want to facepalm a thousand times.

first off, standing under power lines has nothing to do is conducting electricity or not. no, our bodies are not set up for being conductors and it can be fatal…but what the hell does that have to do with this topic at all??

second, you’re not on the frontier when you decide that certain electromagnetic radiation is harmful when intensity is high…turns out that’s already widely proven by the atomic bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki. beyond that, if you have decided that all sorts of radiation in low intensity is harmful, then are you concerned about radio and television waves everywhere? if this was a legitimate concern then every person in europe and america should have cancer by now. we don’t.

you have no idea how this works, you have no idea how the electromagnetic spectrum interacts with living organisms but you’re just going to assume it’s dangerous and causes cancer? that’s ridiculous. i’m not saying that they’re safe, but i’m not going to say they’re unsafe just because i’ve randomly decided so. have you ever been in a metropolitan area and felt “uncomfortable” standing on the street because all the high tension lines buried right underneath you? of course you haven’t because you have associated overhead lines with danger, so your response is emotional and irrational rather than logical and scientific. by all means, think high tension lines and their associated fields are dangerous all you want, but back it up with scientific reasoning and research instead of grainy b&w photos of power lines with post-rock playing in the background.

Having seen it in person, it is not fake.

Having tried this elsewhere, usng UV coated tubes looks so much better.

I’d really like to try this out. Does anyone know how to identify the correct type of power lines? Do you have to bury the bottom end of the tube?

For the people who thing this is stealing:
The power company may start pursuit trees, fences, houses, tv antennas, etc in the path of the power lines, they are stealing.

“For the people who thing this is stealing:
The power company may start pursuit trees, fences, houses, tv antennas, etc in the path of the power lines, they are stealing.”

That’s the reason why they cut corridors in forests for them and keep them cleared. The towers aren’t as high as they are just for fun – they have calculated how high they must be to minimise power loss and the expenses of building them.

An interesting fact about HVDC lines: they create wind because the ionized air will move in one direction, instead of buzzing back and forth like with AC.

I found this video clip which shows happens when you grab the tube half way up (see the last few seconds). I’d imagine that there is a HV line running above them or something to maintain the glow.

Also a few other bits with my experiment yesterday. It didn’t matter whether I had shoes on or not. At several stages I took my shoes off to see what effect it would have and it didn’t seem to make any (ie. if the tube was glowing & it took them off the tube didn’t stop glowing or change its brightness & if it wasn’t glowing and I took them off the tube still didn’t glow).

Another thing with rubbing the fluro with a cloth. You don’t have to press on the fluro very hard either. Once it starts glowing by rubbing it with a cloth, you can have the cloth drapped over you right hand and have your right hand in an arc (ie. not completely around the tube) so that the tube runs in the palm of you hand and then move the tube with your left hand. This way you only have the weight of the tube on your right hand (ie. very little weight) and move the tube with you left hand. You can also hold you left hand still and move your right with the cloth. I prefer holding the left hand still because then I’m not moving the tube and hence likely to hit something in the dark. Just a little bit safer so to say.

Also weather condition when I was under the HVPL were just after sunset when it was dark. Naturally I was there early cuz I was eager to see what would happen. Minimal cloud cover and we have had no rain for the last week or so. In fact it has been quite cloudless for the past few days. The ground was reasonable dry with maybe just a little night dew starting. Temperature would have been about 23 deg C (a little colder than average air conditioning temperature so to say).

Also, I drove the car under the HVPL holding onto the lower end of the tube with the tube basically vertical. The results were no different than when I was walking around. The cut off points were all about the same (ie. about 10m in from the edge of the 75m corridor and about halfway between the center wire and the two outside wires.

Ok people…some of you need to brush up on your physics…

This isn’t “stealing”!!! The powerlines put out these electric and magnetic fields ALL THE TIME. The thing that causes the glow is the flux between them…Its natural for this to happen. You are NOT using the electricity on the line to produce the glow…Its a reaction within the two fields. The power companies put these things in forrests and stuff so people won’t mess with them!

CORRECTION FROM PREVIOUS POST

“I’m guessing that if you had a medium sized battery torch light shining on a glowing tube that you WOULDN’T be able to tell if the tube was glowing or not.”

Here’s another clip of some guy … a little over the top but it shows how the fluro tubes glow under HVPLs.

I’d say that the incandesant bulb has phosphor powder on the inside and that the phosphor atoms being activated by the microwaves (or some other frequency of the electrmagnetic spectrum). I can’t say that I can remember specificaly seeing an incandesant bulb that uses phosphor powder to convert the UV rays from the incandecant filament into visible light but I don’t see any reason why some “green” light bulb manfacturer wouldn’t build them. It is common knowledge that true incandesant bulb’s emit a lot of UV rays … that’s why they are “inefficient” (ie. because a lot of the energy consumed is used to produce so much ‘light’ that you can’t see as such rather than visible light).

mozotron – I am quite aware that you normally can’t dimmer fluros using a standard dimmer arrangement … however with the correct circuit you can dim them as I’ve seen it done. Actually it was about 10 yrs ago that I saw it done so I don’t think that its new technology.

Secondly, you can dim fluros because how come they glow with much less brightness when holding them under the HVPL as opposed to when they are connected to the normal electrical outlet. Naturally it comes from what level of excitation the atoms attain before they release their energy. Thus, when holding the tubes under HVPLs the atoms are only just attaining enough energy to illuminate the tube.

Now, what was interesting about this digital effect, which I think that you missed, was that the whole tube would tend to glow or not glow (ie. it wasn’t just the part of the tube that was within a certain distance of the HVPL thus dismissing the theory that the electrical voltage drop over the tube creates a current through the tube and thus cause the glow).

Hence I’m not sure what you meant by the following because there is minimal (and I doubt if any) inductance of electricity into the tube.
“Voltage = Negative change in magnetic flux over time”

any electrical current flowing through a conductor produces a magnetic field perpindicular to that of the conductor, one end of the tube is planted in the earth, a ground, the high power lines generate large lines of magnetic flux which cut the top end of the tube, producing an electric current which causes light in the tube, and its not stealing, its using the magnetic lines of flux, which is a by-product of electricity, you pay for electricity, not magenetism, so essentially, we could field many of these through out the country, using the ‘free’ light as a solar energy source at night time