I noticed when walking home the other day that the high voltage (200kv I believe) lines running through here were hissing in the rain. What is causing them to hiss?
Electronic – Why do high voltage power lines hiss when it’s raining
high voltagepowersound
Related Solutions
Transmission lines can be modeled as some inductance per unit length and some capacitance to ground per unit length with some resistance to account for losses. The equations to model this behavior can be found in these lecture notes.
The "residual power" is the stored electric charge in the capacitive section of the transmission line. This is a potentially dangerous charge that exists even after the power has been removed. Similar to the charge found in the capacitors in old TV sets and the flash section of cameras.
The amount of time it takes for the charge to decay depends on atmospheric conditions (mainly humidity):
The decay time of residual DC charge in a 500kV transmission line had once been measured during five fine and dry days of winter season. The results showed a large scattering without depending on the simultaneously observed weather conditions, such as temperature or relative humidity. Then the authors have performed an additional experiment in a laboratory to discuss the factors that affect the residual dc charge leakage in a dry condition focusing on the moisture in the air and the dusts floating in the atmosphere. It is shown that absolute humidity alone decides the decay time without scattering under clean and calm condition. The floating dusts blown up by the wind, however, reduce the decay time and bring a large scattering. The dusts should be a charge carrier moving freely in the atmosphere.
“Persons were charged with stealing electricity by placing a large coil, somehow, near high voltage AC transmission lines.”
Is this feasible or was it perhaps an April fool’s article that I swallowed hook line and sinker in my youthful naivety.
Entirely feasible.
Farmers were occasionally charged with power theft in this country (New zealand) in the past. I haven;'t heard of a case in a decade or few - maybe they are getting cleverer at it :-).
This is the same principle as used for "IPT" / "Inductive Power Transfer as seen in phone chargers, industrial monorail powering, electric vehicle charging and much more.
I started to say that if the pickup coil was symmetrical with respect to two phases that were perfectly balanced that you'd get zero pickup, and then suddenly realised that I've always done IPT with essentially a single phase, and that with a 3 phase system with 120 degrees phase separation you should get the advantage of the full load current even if the two phases were fully balanced.
You are essentially getting fields produced by the current, not the voltage, and the voltage is essentially irrelevant as long as you observe the normal conventions that apply to any other dealing with xxx kV.
Energy Harvesting from Electromagnetic Energy Radiating from AC Power Lines - FAR more energy can be obtained than they achieve.
Worked example - I suspect some of the conclusions are suspect A Solution to the RWP for Exam 1 - Stealing Power
Low technical content - high relevance
Directly relevant but low technical value Electromagnetic Harvesters: Free Lunch or Theft!
Several related stack exchange questions with variably useful content.
How would an electric company detect wireless theft of electricity?
Stealing energy from radio towers or power lines
Online vehicle transfer - I do not have access to this paper but it is probably at least relevant as it will have examples of dual linear conductors and a pickup coil.
Related:
Capacitive - but impressive:
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Best Answer
High-voltage partial discharges across the insulators.