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We had a neighbor that put loops of wire under a 600kV line and got enough power to run a water pump for cows. The square law makes that kind of thing pretty low-return.


Here's some calculations on the return [0] (usual caveats of stuff found on the internet). Quite low returns indeed!

[0] https://user.physics.unc.edu/~deardorf/phys25/rwp/exam1rwpso...


Yah, he was just running a 12V bilge pump on a battery, and used a charge controller to keep the battery up so just needed a voltage slightly above the battery voltage. I doubt it used a kWh per day as it cycled. He might still be using it, haven't talked to him in a few years.


The Mythbusters also tried it in the "Free Energy" episode. They pretty much said extracting any useful amount of energy is not worth the effort.




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