Energy from the Ground - Self powered generator by Barbosa and Leal

[Farmhand]

Farmhand:

That is a very unfortunate story.  Note that regular power lines could also short with trees and cause fires.

The real issue is that it was a design and/or implementation or verification or maintenance failure and a person or persons could be legally liable and subject to criminal prosecution.  Somebody signed off on a drawing and then it was implemented in the field.  Presumably this was a civil or electrical engineer.  They also had to visit the site and approve the construction and sign off on that also.  Then there is a maintenance log book somewhere.

I am just making assumptions and I am not going to look up the story.  But people were the true source of the problem.

MileHigh

Yes of course the same or similar thing can happen with regular transmission line, but just like I said about the SWER line the regular power line can also be "safe" just as safe as a SWER line.

I did say it can be safe, a rifle can be safe as well, it is as for most things inanimate, dependent on the design and operation/maintenance.

..

It went to a Royal Commission and the claimants won against the power company along with the other entities the power company was partnered with, a huge monetary payout was made.

But money doesn't bring back the dead. For them it is over.

..

[ramset]

Safe.....

Where I live there is this thing ON TOP of the ground with 2 to 60 Ton things on wheels
flying past at speeds that would tare little Johny into pieces if he wasn;t careful
on his way to school...or  crossing it.

crossing the road is VERY dangerous probably an infinite order of magnitude more so than an SWER system in most countries.

as a matter of fact The Dangerous list is a very long list ,with the common screwdriver at the very top according to OSHA.

[Grumage]

Pop quiz no Googling:  If there is a break in a long distance transmission line, how do you find it?

Dear MileHigh.

Johnny Cash had the answer !!     Walk the Line.

I spent nearly 2 decades with the supply industry. Commissioning and Maintenance dep't. I was lucky to have been with one of only two Boards that operated an interconnected ring HV distribution system. Actually a stroke of genius, because you only needed a few different gauges of over head line compared to radial systems where line tapering had to be employed !!

Our system was so sensitive it could detect and clear faults associated with trees touching the OH lines ( Sensitive Earth Fault ). It also had the capability of differentiating between an In Zone fault and Out of Zone fault.

When I left the industry some 24 years ago they were just implementing the use of Vacuum circuit breakers which required zero maintenance over the earlier Oil circuit breakers. These VCB's were employed on sub circuits making large outages a thing of the past.

Now a break in an underground cable is a far different story !!   

Cheers Grum.

[MileHigh]

Grum:

If we could only all walk the line.

I wasn't aware of the sensitive systems that can detect small line incidents like you mentioned.  Out here in the colonies we have transmission lines spanning such vast distances that they would only find your bones after 50 years if you got lost in the bush and were following the line to get back to civilization.  Your whole country is like a cross-town drive to us.   

So, you get the nasty buzzing sound also with Manuela nowhere to be found.

But I will leave a clue:  "Tesla Impulse Technology."

MileHigh

[MileHigh]

Remember EF?

The way I see it, the earth return is adding energy to the load. It's coiled around the #4 AWG to modulate and attract energy from the ground.

At the most this coiled earth return could be thought of as a current transformer but it would be wrong in this device because its working with a different form of current called the B-EMF. The B-EMF current behaves not at all like the current we know.

Think Elvis.