Just a quick thought experiment, not actually planning to do

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>>1050406

yes 100% possible, not with full power tho, here in east Europe there was boom of this shit back in the 90's, they passed a law for it too, you go in prison for 3-10 years if inspectors find this shit in your house.

Right now the latest boom is, ppl living near (100's of meters) near high voltage power lines (pic related) put big anthenas in series or something and "harvest" electricity enough to power up batteries (much like solar batteries) and convert it back to usable energy

>>1050406
Yes.

You can also just tap the wire before the meter and get un-metered electricity. You can run the old meters upside down and they count backwards.

You can slow some models with magnets.

All of which are pretty stupid and will land you big fines if caught and possibly jail time.

>>1050439
There's almost always somewhere you can tap the wires off that's 100% hide-able, be it underground or behind drywall. If you patch the drywall right, no inspector is going to do some dumb shit like cut a hole in your wall unless you're stupid enough to get more than half of your power from before the meter.

>>1050439

Why would a magnet slow down a meter? Just by creating more tension on the pin upwards? Or the electronics inside the unit?

>>1050514
>Why would a magnet slow down a meter?

It doesn't, and never has. The urban legend was that the magnet pulled on the little metal wheel and "slowed it down." It's never actually worked, but the Jews at the utility company will still try to extort shekel from you if they find a magnet within 10 feet of one of their meters.

>>1050487

It's not "hide-able". It's "they have bigger things to deal with...able...". You can go months, maybe even a year or better without getting caught but they will eventually catch you. Source - I personally know the regional claims manager at a large energy company (he started off as a meter reader 30 years ago). He has some crazy stories.

And stealing power off transmission lines through a large inductor was covered on Mythbusters - yes, it can be done but they can detect the drop.

>>1050514
>Why would a magnet slow down a meter?

Eddy currents produce drag. But that only works if you can get even a powerful magnet within a few millimeters of the disk.

The theory is good. In practice, it's not worth shit.

Very easy to do if you are an electrician. Not even remotely advisable if you value your safety and freedom. Either way if they suspect someone is stealing electricity they can do an amp reading on the conductors before the meter and afterwards and easily see the difference, so even a hidden underground splice could be detected. They might try another meter thinking it is faulty but it would quickly become apparent and you would quickly be in deep shit. Not a matter of "if" they catch you, just a matter of "when". My energy supplier even offers rewards for info leading to those stealing electricity. Small amounts occasionally would likely go unnoticed. For those small amounts it isn't worth the safety or legal risks.

>>1050487
>There's almost always somewhere you can tap the wires off that's 100% hide-able, be it underground or behind drywall. If you patch the drywall right, no inspector is going to do some dumb shit like cut a hole in your wall unless you're stupid enough to get more than half of your power from before the meter.
In the USA anyway, the main way that they catch people doing this is if your energy bill is suddenly drastically lower all the time.
They have all the statistics on all of the houses they service, and so they can predict very closely what the reasonable range of your home's energy bill will be.

In the western US, they do this to bust people renting houses and apartments and using them as grow houses for marijuana. If the house has an unusually high energy bill and consistent power use all the time 24 hours a day/7 days a week, the power company informs the police and they come snooping around.
,,,,
And now, you can't even install solar panels and use those to grow weed.
People used to do this, 15+ years ago. They knew they'd get busted if they just used the normal power, so they would install solar panels. They'd get normal power service and put the house lights on timers (to run them normally a bit) and then use the solar power for the grow lights. But now you can't do that anymore.
Why, you may wonder?
You have to get building permits to install the solar panels, and now the power company gets a list of houses that got permits every month.
A normal person who installs solar also registers with the power company, to get the subsidies given for solar panels. So if you install solar panels but don't apply for the subsidy, the power company informs the cops that you may be running a grow house and then the cops come looking around.

California is the worst US state for home energy monitoring.
If your power bill is odd at all--too high or too low--that counts as "unusual energy use patterns" and the police get informed/power company investigates.

>>1051961
>A normal person who installs solar also registers with the power company, to get the subsidies given for solar panels. So if you install solar panels but don't apply for the subsidy, the power company informs the cops that you may be running a grow house and then the cops come looking around.
This is actually not true in California. Yes, the power company could pass that data along, but it would be worthless because it would include almost every house with solar. The application for solar tax credits requires an inspection, the costs of which come out of the applicant's pocket. It costs more to get the subsidy than the subsidy pays.
Yes, it's fucking stupid.

>>1051961
Cops don't just roll up on you cause your power bill is weird. This isn't Soviet Russia. Maybe it is like that in Kalifornistan but the real world disagrees with you.

>>1050406
>stealing tiny amounts of power
>not digging a trench out to your neighborhood's 5kV J-box, burying some new cable, installing a step down transformer in your garage, and supplying your entire house from a separate feed so the meter/incoming cable aren't tampered with and thus you won't go to jail while paying $0.00 for electricity

You can harvest electricity wirelessly by placing cables in the EM field that is emitted from power lines, provided the shielding is weak enough (or you weaken it yourself somehow). I work at a research firm that does lots of shit related to EM fields and I'm starting to think about doing it

>>1052012

I'm also interested in intercepting the signal in cable lines but I don't know how the fuck information is encoded in digital cable signals or where to begin with that, if anyone has any info

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>>1052012

pic related. The strength of the field gets weak quickly because its divided by the radius squared as you can see. Getting close to the line will be absolutely crucial to maximize the energy you can sap from the line. This is less important if you were trying to intercept a cable signal like in the other project I mentioned

What kind of assbackwards meter is that? Is that shit from the 1950s? What country is this from?
>>1050406

>>1052001

that wont work

>>1051961
>Land of the free

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>>1052018
>>1052012

Pic related.
This is low voltage phone cable poles in eastern Europe, in the living areas (Cities, villages etc.) all the high power cables are underground, except in the rural areas.

The fucking gypsies steal electricity from them and use diy shit to make it usable with home appliances.

>>1052709
They steal it with direct cables from the pole to their home.

>>1052682

In Italy they all used to be like that up until 10-15 years ago.

And yes, they did come straight from the '50s because nobody bothered to change them until they made it mandatory.

>>1050406
The gray box on the left is the cutout and holds your incoming fuse. UK this is maybe 80-100A. This is then passed through the meter into the fuse box above.
The point being that your diagram has the transformer on the load side of the meter, in this set up you would still be paying for your usage.

In your house, in a field, however you do it electricity is not free, you are not skimming waste energy that nobody is using, you are not beating the system. If you don't pay for it it's abstraction and all that happens is everyone else's bills go up.

Magnets can very easily interfere with electric meters even modern ones because the method of measuring current is based on the electromagnetic field produced by the supply cable.

If you want to play with abstracting electricity try a phone line, they are usually good for about 50v and low enough current that you shouldn't get too hurt when it goes wrong but you still get the knock at the door when they track you down for draining their power.

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>>1050406

>>1050406
Power engineer here.

I just want to point out the margins a lot of utilities work with are extremely slim, and getting slimmer all the time due to BS government regulations on coal and other sources of cheap power.

Even people buying solar panels is hurting parts of the industry badly because those people are selling the power they generate back to us while paying nothing into the system. We need that money to be able to pay for the upkeep of the system so when it's cloudy 3/4 days in a row and your panels don't generate, we can supply you mains power.

>>1052001
You're retarded. Not only would half the fucking neighborhood see you digging trenches for conduit and cable to your house and call the cops because they're not beta enough to pay for your power for you, the next time they inspect that junction box they'd find a cable not on their drawings and follow it right back to your house.

But go ahead and try it because you'll probably kill yourself attempting it.

>>1054784
>I just want to point out the margins a lot of utilities work with are extremely slim, and getting slimmer all the time due to BS government regulations on coal and other sources of cheap power.
then how come some of these companies are very profitable?

>>1050576
Theres a guy in my town going 25+ years that i know of without a gas meter. Fucking dick let gras grow around the meter on summer and then at night just bypassed it and threw it away. Id snitch on him because he was a faggot of a slumlord, but he's a pretty nice guy and im no snitch. Plus, i paid for it at the house. That one went to his shop.

Mfw your uninsulated shop is 90° all winter...

>>1054784
U faggots get like $150 a month from me. Dont bitch at me because fucking MSHA is choking out the mines and they have to rape u to make money and stay open. Tell west virginia to tell uncle sam to suck their dicks. I can sell power back in bumfuck oklahoma so what i do with my solar is nuny busns.

Lots of places are getting digital meters now anyway so I suspect stealing power is only going to get harder.

>>1054784
Worse things could happen than the government keeping public utilities from making obscene profits. If they want to spend all of what they do earn on executive perks and then complain they don't make enough, so be it.

>>1054784
>I just want to point out the margins a lot of utilities work with are extremely slim
is that what they tell you when you mention your pitiful wage?