Hacker News Reader

Comment by tankenmate | Hacker News Reader

If you harvest loss that was happening anyway then it isn't theft; you can't be charged for theft for something someone else threw away.

View on HN

That’s not really true, you’re not harvesting “loss”. When you use that electromagnetic field to induce a current, you’re creating another electromagnetic field that opposes the first one, and which resists the current in the high voltage line.

I’m not saying this is stealing, but it’s certainly not “harvesting loss”.

Well the ground is creating that exact opposing electric field anyway. If trees were planted to the same height as the wire, then the loss to the electric company is the same.

He's just in effect increasing the height of the ground slightly and tapping the potential difference. You might as well park a car underneath it, attach a wire between the body and ground, and get same or better results, because the surface area is larger (capacitively coupled).

It's not, you're increasing the total resistance felt by the line. There is no free energy.

My point wasn't "there's no free energy", of course the energy has to come from somewhere. But transmission lines have parasitic loss anyway. My point is that rather than that energy being lost to the environment generally it can be directed to a specific circuit and used. Obviously though this is a much much lower amount of energy than can be "actively" harvested.

Any amount of harvesting increases losses.

> you can't be charged for theft for something someone else threw away.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13037808

A woman has admitted handling stolen goods after being accused of taking potato waffles, pies, and 100 packets of ham from a bin outside of a Tesco Express in Essex. But if something is thrown away, when is it illegal to take it?

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53724620

Getting all your cardboard recycled may often seem like a pain, but there is big money to be made from all this so-called "beige gold". And sadly this is attracting criminals around the world.

Thieves are making a fortune from stealing used cardboard that's been left out to be recycled, and selling it on. This means that legitimate recycling firms, and the city and other local authorities who take a cut from their sales, are missing out on tens of millions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com