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A comment on Harvesting Electricity from High-Voltage Transmission Lines Using Fences. Parent comment

Re:Harvesting Electricity from High-Voltage Transmission Lin... by jacquesm on Sunday January 28, 2024 @04:10AM (#39163793)
This is exactly it. If you were to do this 'at scale' you'd end up having to generate more electricity to compensate for the losses, so it's clearly theft. Whether your grid coupling uses a capacitor or an inductor isn't relevant, clearly you are taking energy from the grid and is the thing that matters.
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Re:Harvesting Electricity from High-Voltage Transmission Lin... by DamonHD on Sunday January 28, 2024 @01:08PM (#39168168)
Indeed, and thus I stand by my original point, though downvoted!

The UK Wireless Telegraphy Acts made it illegal to listen to something that you weren't meant to by fiat without need of any proof of harm AFAIK, so there could easily be random laws in various places outlawing this extraction of power that has to be made up by other generation, even if small.

You generally aren't allowed to extract even small amounts of power from the system unmetered with a wire either, without specific permission.

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