Military-Designed "Bat Hook" Lets You Charge Your Phone from Overhead Power Lines

well hot damn i might just run one of these to my house for free power!!

Ever hear of theft, how about electrocution. Throw this baby over the wrong line and light yourself up. This is the worst idea I seen in a long time.

ya but how do you get it off the wire if the razor blade is pierced into the plastic?

Since when is any power in a power line free?

Theft of services? Damaging private property?

I picture a bunch of fried hillbillies hanging from power lines.

jayhawker- there are no plastic coating's on the power lines there all exposed, the voltage is just low its the amps that are high. it would most defiantly compromise the integrity of the wire though, which is why i cant see this going mainstream or even being legal to use

Think about how many holes there will be in power lines by the time they release this?

This is proof that the Government is trying to kill all the stupid people.

rofl.. im my country(Sri lanka.. we have been using something similar to this.. low budget of course to power the neighborhood and the surrounding area when we have a huge event such as a wedding or a party. Instead of drawing power lines with bulbs and other stuff we just attach the light bulb directly to the powerline using a pvc pipe. two coils for power and some tape ...

are you all kidding? this is obviously some sort of new special forces equipment. Charging your cell phone is just a joke. Think about a seals team stuck somewhere and they need power NOW!!! they pull this cable out throw it on the nearest line. bam. Its obviously designed to handle high amps. Who cares if it compromises the line. I am sure this will only be used in MILITARY applications. MAYBE it would be used domestically in emergency situation. like a terrorist attack or an accident and they set up an aid base and need power now. there is no need to release. It will only be used in an emergency. Releasing it is a mute point. After what ever emergency is over they probably have to get a cherry picker to replace the line and take the thing off. Batman doesn't go and retrieve all of his batarangs why would he retrieve this gadget?!?!

wtf, why are all of you assuming this is for civilians?

Looks like a safe commercial version of "free energy" hooks, used all over settlements in Cuba ;)
Electricity doesn't flow just inside wires, so it would be legal to tap into large fields around them. What is an electron?

Then I want to know why we still need huge transformers to get power into our houses? This thing is tiny! And you can plug into a power line with it??? What gives?

Please someone correct me if I am wrong but the razor blade is unnecessary due to the fact that a current carrying conductor creates a magnetic field which through the magic of induction a coil of wire can be placed parallel to the wire and a voltage will be induced in that coil, the amount of amperage will then depend on the resistance of the connected system. Then again I am an early physics student and just starting my electrical career.

I know that the article was a little tongue in cheek, but this is some dangerous stuff. They claimed that the local lines were 7200 volts -- the number I'd always heard was 13,800. That's for 'city lines' -- not long distance high lines.

I'm sure that as a mil spec device, this unit handles it with reasonable safety -- unless of course, the line is old and it breaks when you flip this skyhook over it. Then you'd have high tension cables leaking all over the place.

Most electrocutions in the US are from 110v -- but that's because we generally don't get near the hard core stuff.

A few corrections,

@revthompson, power lines are insulated (watch the video), they carry high volatage AC at a low amperage.

@inaka_rob, the line is not designed for high amperage because the amperage of the power line is very low

@ford2go, i agree that power lines are dangerous, but it is the amperage that kills, not the voltage. You need 60mA through your heart to kill you, which requires a high voltage and amperage due to the body's resistance.

@scotx, you are correct but you need a coil of wire around the power line (i do believe) to generate a current.

This is a joke, right?

I mean, it would be only usefull in the populated areas of the US. Every country has it's own standard here.

In Germany, all houses are connected via underground power. In Norway, most houses have a airborne cable, that contains all 4 Wires, some have seperate, insulated or uninsulated cables. Even the voltage will differ.

Basicly, this would be usefull for commando forces operation in urban US territories - well, I guess there is a need for it.

Neat gadget.

The "sales pitch" is bit over the top. Tap into power lines in the Jungle? In the Dessert? In the Ocean? On the moon? I had to check my calendar to make sure it was not April 1st.

I can see this being packaged with "Electricity for Dummies".

So most urban street power lines carry something of the order of 3600 Volts. Unless this thing has some really clever insulation, all you're gonna be doing it grounding that voltage, which means it will look for anything to run through and reach the ground - including you.

The US military is forbidden from operating within our borders, so this gadget will be illegal here in the US. Now, chances are in any war zone there will be no power in those urban lines, if the power grids haven't been compromised... so what's the point of this???

I can only see this being of any kind of use to say, spies, navy seals and commandos... but even those guys are in and out... never in one place long enough to need new batteries. Maybe snipers, but any electronics would give up their location.

So this idea seems more like rubbish. Another scam artist, trying to milk the system and get a bloated defense contract.

"Then I want to know why we still need huge transformers to get power into our houses?" - A_Rock

If all you cared about about was enough DC power to run a laptop and it didn't matter if half the power was lost then the transformer to your house would need be no bigger than a normal power-brick.

If on the other hand you want to run big, three-phase loads like a washing machine the transformer needs to be much bigger.

"So most urban street power lines carry something of the order of 3600 Volts."

The break down voltage of air is ~33 000 V/cm.

"Unless this thing has some really clever insulation[...]"

A little bit of plastic or a small air-gap should suffice. I don't see why it would require particularly impressive insulation.

First off, this is a good idea. This provides a necessity to a military team who needs it.

This would not be available to the average Joe, not to mention, it would be illegal to use.

@Spaie_Noche, the concept of amperage killing people is overstated and misunderstood. A 13KV power source designed to provide home electrical would have no problem providing 60mA through the human body. As a matter of fact it would probably explode them. The statement "Voltage doesn't kill, amperage does." is a ridiculous one since the voltage is providing the force to push the current in the first place. Without voltage there would be no current through the load(body) to begin with. I have heard many a comment about high amperage, low voltage lines being dangerous. Umm, the current is in the wire. Ever notice that electrical gloves are rated by voltage? If the voltage wasn't the factor that killed you, then a highly important piece of life protecting equipment such as gloves wouldn't be rated with voltage. In order for the amperage to matter, it has to go through the right path in your body at or over the right amount. It won't do that unless you have the right level of voltage...

Source
25 years electrical experience.

This is pretty amusing.

It doesnt matter whether or not this is a military tool.
Eventually, most military tools make it to to average consumer market (think of Military Supply Stores).

Even still, this is not a tough concept to duplicate and as one or two other posters have stated, they have been doing this for a long time (Cuba, India, for ex).

Will people try this? Yes
Will people fry their dumb-@sses? Yes

Let the good times roll and the Darwin Awards be won!

new
revthompson
06/29/10 at 10:16 pm
jayhawker- there are no plastic coating's on the power lines there all exposed, the voltage is just low its the amps that are high. it would most defiantly compromise the integrity of the wire though, which is why i cant see this going mainstream or even being legal to use.
------------------------------------------------------
Only true of primary lines. Service drops to building from the transformer are commonly ACSR (aluminum conductor steel reinforced) which provide at least one insulated 'hot' wire
and a bare 'neutral' wire.

Primary lines can carry anywhere from 7200vac to in excess of 162,000vac.

lnwolf41 A transformer is needed to step down the voltage before going to your house because as the voltage decreases the amperage increases. As for the use in desserts or jungles, I'm sure there are power lines running through parts of the sahara and parts of the jungles in south america, It looks like if you snapped the line like a whip it would dislodge the blade and let it down, disconnet the hook pull the free cable back over the line.
I'd still have a pair of insulated gloves handy myself.

Though the device looks dangerous and illegal, I think it would be possible to do something similar, using an induction coil.

The power line radiates electromagnetic force along its whole length. If you had one passing over your house, you could set up a large induction coil without even touching the line or its pole. The coil could pick up enough radiation to power the house, just depending on how many windings it contained.

I have lived in Chile, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands. I have friends and family who have lived and traveled all over the world. One common story we all tell is about the wires hanging on the power lines in the poor neighborhoods. I have lived in homes where the family failed to pay their power bill, so they sneak out at night and use a bamboo stick to throw wires over the power lines. The power company periodically goes around cutting them, but they just come back. The power lines are typically lower.
The military may have need of higher power access for covert operations where a generator is not practical. This would be handy. Regarding volts/cycle differences; ever heard of adapters. If I was operating in a certain country, I would have the right power modification device.
Yes, it is illegal. You will never see it in the first world outside of our ghettos. Then it will not be so fancy.

One of the more useless devices I have seen, and the development costs were probably huge...
Ivan Malagurski

They throw fish hooks over lines all the time in poorer countries to power their TV's and stuff. This is hardly new, and it seems you'd have to be at a spot where the razor blade can pierce the insulated wire and the bare wire can touch the opposite location. That may not occur naturally in the position of the wire on an overhead line. Why don't they just power their phones by inductively coupling with the power line using a long wire laid on the ground?

Well that answers my question ^.^ Didn't have to be all mean about it though :P I don't know everything. I try but I'm still not even close :(

Seems kind of stupid to promote this kind of stuff as innovation. A crank radio with a cell charging port has been sold around here for years, a more practical and portable solution even for the military. Of course by the time the military spec & requisition is written even they will cost mega bucks per unit.

Also the induction coil idea has been around for a while, but what's the point of tapping a power grid just charge a cell phone. If the idea is to sip a little grid power without giving away your position, a better solution is a small fuelcell. How about a lump a charcoal, a lighter and a thermal couple or piezoelectric powered marching boots?

The military is outside all day long, you'd think they be putting solar cells on every vehicle and equipment surface that sees the light of day to collect solar power for communications, etc. But it would be embarrassing to have communications taken out by a paint-ball gun or a black paint balloon dropped from a plane.

GAWD - ?What could possibly go wrong?
I'm sure they used a computer to design it... so, they'll fix it in the next version of WinWoes.

What could go Wrong? Let me count the ways:
1, Not all power lines up there (on them there poles) (insulated or otherwise) are 110VAC. Some are much higher.

2, The reason that those wires are 'way' up there is - so that no one will touch them (twice). Actually, first contact is usually the last contact - so, repeat offenses are rare.

3, There is next to no current limitation on any of those over head lines... Basically, they supply current until the cables melt. In the US, they do implement some fuse links and auto-reset disconnects. But, they are up in the 10s of 1000s of amps... By the time they trip, whatever is providing the offending path to ground it is well done.

4, Let's hope that the special forces are being deployed some where outside the country. So, we aren't talking domestic electrical power codes here. You can get AC, DC, different frequencies, different minimum residential voltages, etc... but, the stuff will still kill ya.

5, Electric Fields don't provide power. They represent electrical potential. In order to get power, one must have current. In order to get current, one must have a circuit.
This critter could distribute the electrical potential closer to ground... But, without a ground wire, It's not completing the circuit.

6, Since this thing cuts into what is hopefully a 110VAC line and delivers that potential to some one standing on ground potential, if there is a knick in the insulation of the grappling cable and the special ops soldier finds it with their bare hands, they shall be field promoted to the rank of fuse. The military always take such good care of their equipment. I couldn't imagine some one scuffing any insulation off that grappling wire.

This looks like sumthun that should be marketed and sold "TO" the terrorists.

If one is predisposed to steal power, it is relatively easy to do - and, you can live to tell the tale.
A clip on induction coil would do the trick.
The induction coil 'would' require that the lines be delivering some degree of current (a couple of amps minimum). But, it could scarf off enough current - and, condition that energy - supplying it to a cell phone.

This device reminds me of the Iraqi bomb detector that the Bagdad police use at automobile check points. It's a black box with a cable and an antenna looking thing.. It's powered by the policeman shuffling their feet. As the cop shuffles around the vehicle waving this device, he observes the black box for an indication (flashing light or audible beep) certifying that the vehicle is transporting explosives. So far, the police have only seen a flash or heard anything while the vehicle is actually exploding.
The Iraqis should have caught on when the operator’s manual required corduroy pants as part of the device's calibration.

One can but wonder, who's side is this guy on?
Is his first name Abdul?

@sparky1000: voltage does not kill, current kills

hey, you may have 25 years electrical experience, but you have zero years knowhow. the current is necessarily what kills you, the large amount of electron flowing through your body does the trick, whether it disrupts you heart beat signals or frys you. technically you could kill your self with about 30 volt, and two amps; there only has to be a circuit connection that runs across your heart, ie using both hands to short it out. the reason why i say that voltage can't kill you is there are things call tesla coils. these devices are coupled transformers that bring about voltages up to 1,000,000 volts or higher. people have put themselves in these field and sparks fly from their fingertips. (look on you tube for tesla coil videos) the reason they do not die is that the amperage, or current is way to low. the voltage does not kill, it only determines how "dangerous" it is. for example, with low voltage systems, the circuit has to be very "easy" for the electricity to run through, maybe you have wet hands and you touch the wires directly. for high voltage systems, the current can arc across air itself, you may not have even touched the wire; such as when using tesla coils, the current may cover very large electrical resistances include jumping several feet through the air.

@scotx: the razor blade is necessary.

The razor blade pierces any insulation, it charges the wire, and the electrons flow down through the wire and to the "ground" which is probably a metal stake driven into the ground.

@revthomson: the voltage is high and the amps low

(also, scotx pay attention)

also the wires are very high voltage and low current. this reduces power losses. power loses are equal to R*(I^2)(resistance times current squared). since the current term is squared, it is a good idea to reduce this term as much as possible. this can be done by jacking up the voltage, which lowers the current, all the while the same amount of power flows through the wires. if you increase the voltage by a factor of 1000, the current decreases by a factor of 1000 and the power losses decrease by a factor of 1,000,000.

@soylent: Dc power conversions use converters, ac power changes use transformers.

Tranformers are large because there is a limit to how much flux density that can pass through a ferromegnetic (iron) core. power is transferred in ac by coils wrapped around a iron core. this magnetizes, then switches direction as the alternating current switches direction, creating a "flux"(change in magnetism, from + to 0 to - to 0 and back again). this flux moves through the iron, which is generally shaped in a ring, to the next, or secondary coil. this coil has a current induced in it depending upon the amoun of flux through it. the voltages are determined by the ratio of turns from primary to secondary, and the incoming voltage of course. If you wish to run only 100 watts, the transformer can be very small. if you wish to run about 2000 watts, the transformers are the size of 5 gallon buckets. if you wish to 2000000 watts, the transformers are the size of sheds, or small houses. this is due to the fact that there is a limit of how much flux can be delivered, and of course how much heat is generated, due the hysteresis losses (the amount of energy it takes to change the magnetic orientation in ferromagnetic materials) through the magnetic core. this may require adding more iron in thin plates (to reduce eddy currents) and allow more flux to be delivered to the secondary coil

Mechanical Engineer w/ a Bachelor's degree

Back on the ranch in Montana years ago, we a section of fence that ran parallel right under a large transmission line for a few hundred yards of its total run. We stood around one day looking at the line and the fence and back at the line when a great idea struck us. We all had visions of sinusoidal changes in magnetic flux around those AC lines.

We bought a bunch of electric fence insulators and went to work.

Inducing current was a great idea and it worked like a charm. We weren't lighting the house, but it did manage to electrify a couple of other fences enough for out purposes.

That is until one day a maintenance crew happened to notice that it wasn't just an innocent little fence any more.

The power company wasn't happy. For some reason they thought we were stealing.

We shrugged our shoulders...

Heck, they ran their power line right along our fence line, right?

This should never have been revealed. The device steals power. It does not have any application in the every day life. Any attempt to copy it could be fatal. Putting it on the wrong line could be fatal. When I first saw the article I thought it was an emf converter which could be safe in some applications and would not be stealing. Shame on PS.

Obviously its for urban combat situations... right?

Um any college student studying electrical engineering knows how to draw power from overhead lines wirelessly through induction. But its highly illegal....

Now I understand why people in the UK were shocked that I understood sarcasm... sigh. God bless America...

Robert M. Smith, MD, PhD

This is nothing. Have you heard about the new "Flight Hook"? Yeah, it's a rocket powered hook attached to a carbon fiber cable. You fire it at airliners flying overhead and hitch a ride to your destination. It comes with a harness and a parachute in case you only want to make a short hop.

At 1:47 into the video I heard something. Did I hear correctly? A bare wire takes the electricity away from my house as well as delivering it? But I pay for the electricity that is delivered to me. Why can't I store the current that I'm giving back? After all didn't I pay for it? or is there something here that I fail to understand?

I've been affraid of electricity since I was a kid and helped by dad splice his music tapes with his old tape recorder [Like 1959-62] He'd always swear I wouldn't get shocked, but I always did. Funny how you'll believe your father like that.

Since then I've never fully understood or wanted to understand about electricity other than we live in an electric universe, we are all part and parcel of the 'wave actions' of our world and we don't really need wires to connect.

Send them to poor North Koreans that live near Pyongyang. haha Oh I made myself feel bad.

This is not a new idea as several people have already stated!! Not only do you see this practice of "wire hooking" in many other countries, it is also much more common than you might think in the US. I can recall several articles and stores of this occurring in LA CA.

Funny how people can over complicate a discussion on something as simple as how power can be diverted from these "strange wirey things" over our heads.

i think what this is about is that many of your poor nations that some comments are talking about is that they tend to use less transformers, such as rio dejanero(however the hell you spell it) in the poorer sections where the current needed is lower for lack of appliances so what you get is household voltage throughout most of the lower overhead wires which are still separate at the poles, powering many households at once, allowing for the fishhook method. we in the states tend to keep very high voltages throughout and put a transformer for just about every house. from the transformer to the house we typically have two insulated (hot) wires with an uninsulated neutral wrapped around a steal cable for strength, meaning you would be very lucky to get this to work in the states, possibly shorting the two phase wires in the process and causing a very load and unstealthy bang.
i seriously doubt that thing is designed to step down 10,200 or 14000 volt lines.