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From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: Living near high tension lines
Message-ID: <753@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 13-Nov-87 11:11:23 EST
Article-I.D.: neoucom.753
Posted: Fri Nov 13 11:11:23 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 16-Nov-87 04:17:38 EST
References: <9312@tekecs.TEK.COM> <1718@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1913@frog.UUCP> <2223@kitty.UUCP>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 28
Summary: I heard such an apochryphal story in an EE class


When I was in school, I had to suffer though a power systems
engineering course that is one of those unavoidable rites of
passage to getting one's degree.  You know the class, a room full
of 1930s vintage 5 horsepower motors and meters with 100 amp
scales.

The class was run by a person who was a veteran of Ohio Edison.  He
related a story of a farmer who lived in the vicinity of Mansfield,
Ohio where there is a 365 KV line.  The farmer, he claimed, had
rigged up a power-stealing system ostensibly disguised as a flag
pole.  He had to construct a monsterous transformer, much as Larry
described, that looked like an over-grown Tesla coil.

The power thief was caught, the prof claimed, in a rather amusing
way.  There had been a failure on the local power distribution
system.  A work crew was dispatched to find the fault.  Apparently
the work crew becase suspicious when they observed the farmer's
house was the only one in the area with lights on and no sound of a
back-up generator running.  (The failure was on the local system,
*not* the 365 KV line.)

The prof claimed that Ohio Edison successfully prosecuted the guy
for stealing power and forced him to take down his flag pole.

Bill Mayhew
NEOUCOM
(wtm@neoucom.UUCP)