Electronics > Power/Renewable Energy/EV's

Advice on toroidal inductor design for power harvesting

(1/5) > >>

Viroos:
Hi, I'm a mechanical engineer, but occasionally do some electro-mechanical systems too, but I feel that my knowledge in EE is insufficient. Now I need to design a toroidal inductor in order to harvest power from overhead high voltage lines. How to do it right? The winding should be "simple" or like in Rogowski coil? The core should be iron, ferrite or laminated steel? Thanks!

Gyro:
Forget about anything toroidal for an external magnetic field, they specifically reject them - in fact forget about any magnetic system as the fields from the overhead conductors will cancel long before they reach the ground. Even if the fields didn't cancel, they would be so weak by the time they reached the ground as to be useless.

indeterminate:
This was a thing in AUS many years ago with chicken sheds built near HV Transmission lines stealing power from the lines with large inductors placed under the lines.
The power company will go you for theft when they find it.

Whales:
+1 for toroidal being wrong.  A toroid would only work if it was built around the power line (!).  Toroids are beloved because they contain and isolate their internal magnetic fields very well, you want the opposite.

Any core metal will work for low frequency (50/60Hz) stuff, it's the same stuff that normal wall transformers deal with, so laminated steel is fine.

Power companies will not like you sticking up suspicious objects under their power lines.  It's not really the theft they're worried about (even if they use that as an excuse to stop you),  instead they are worried that other people will copy you and do it dangerously.  If one person puts up some weird poles under a power line then another person will do it but taller and more dangerously.

I would recommend doing your experiments from inside a wooden house or structure.  That way you're guaranteed unable to get too close to the wires and the power company doesn't have to worry about copycats.  There are still devices that you can make that could form an electrocution hazard however (even at a distance) so don't assume it's 100% safe.

Gyro:

--- Quote from: indeterminate on January 16, 2025, 09:53:23 pm ---This was a thing in AUS many years ago with chicken sheds built near HV Transmission lines stealing power from the lines with large inductors placed under the lines.
The power company will go you for theft when they find it.

--- End quote ---

Inductive chicken sheds of capacitive chicken sheds (the latter possibly being more productive)? Very tall sheds would of course be more beneficial but more noticeable. Either way, the break-even time would be... never.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

There was an error while thanking
Thanking...
Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod