Does the Earth Have a Net Electric Charge, and Can That Be Tapped?

[ResinRat2]

Here we go.

This may be a way to sink a pvc pipe, then add the cable later:

http://www.cosjwt.com/index.php?a=12

Looks like it would take a while, but cheap. Just need plenty of elbow grease.

Just need to cut the pipe to get a sharp tip.

Too bad it's the dead of winter and the ground is frozen right now.

[raburgeson]

The potential difference between the Earth and another celestial body could produce one whopping lightning bolt. However the Earth's potential is unfortunately our ground potential. The atmosphere has the most varying potential and has been tapped. The most powerful untapped energy source I can think of on the planet is the tides. Imagine having the energy that hits your continent every day.

[sm0ky2]

Trees act as a "conductor" through the air, with a much lower resistance than air itself. ( i think impedance is the more proper term here) so they act as an "arial" of sorts...
When you connect to the earth-ground, this shows a voltage potential between the tree and the ground. The current chooses to take the path of least resistance through your meter, rather than through the base of the tree to ground, but trees have a constant low-amperage current flowing through them from the bottom to the  top at all times. ( i would imagine there should be a voltage between two points in the tree, low and high)

in order to attain great currents from the earth, as discussed in a paper Tesla wrote, you must create a low-impedence connection into the earth.

my thoughts are that this would include either a large mass of metal, in the ground, or several smaller connections.

I demonstrated this when i was experimenting with the Earth Batteries.
at one point i had some 20+ ground leads feeding my experiment, and admittedly i never achieved anything close to what Bill has done, i did notice a large increase in current from multiple leads, and succeeded in lighting a large string of LED's in series and parallel, using a JT circuit.

It was nothing really significant, but it did shed some light on what Tesla had to say on the subject.
So, rather than just one wire,. i would suggest a lot of wires, or a very large piece of metal, burried deep into the earth.

[ResinRat2]

Hello Smoky,

Just for my curiosity, how deep were your earth-ground leads?

RR2

[sm0ky2]

Hello Smoky,

Just for my curiosity, how deep were your earth-ground leads?

RR2

the final phase of my Earth Battery experiments consisted of a 4-ft galvanized steel pipe (1 inch was sticking out above ground)
and several short (2-4 inch) wires of various kinds: steel wire, copper wire, magnetic iron wire, non-magnetic iron wire, a handful of soft-iron twist-ties, and some insulated wires of unknown composition that i took from toy-packaging

there was a piece of coax cable hooked into the galvanized pipe, that i ran to my oscilloscope (center wire only), but i think i had that disconnected when i ran the joule thief.