> smaller than the coronal discharge [...] lost in the noise

This is again technically plausible but ethically irrelevant.

It's like the fallacy in: "It's OK for people to steal goods from that store, because the parent-company is very big and one theft won't even show up on their monthly financials and they've got spoilage and breakage too."

> I suspect we are talking about 24 watts

The video demonstration shows 50 watts of input.

Napkin-math: Suppose one drone uses 1000 (battery) watts flying around, and does so for 4 hours each day for a month. (Made possible by an improved version of this research that charges at 200w.) That's 4 kWH. The electrical price is $0.20/kWh.

That means siphoning $24/month for one drone. That's not a casual "keep the extra penny", that's a Netflix Premium subscription.