Posted on 01/24/2005 1:13:36 PM PST by hsmomx3
PHOENIX (AP) -- They look like cobwebs or huge balls of spaghetti hanging from electric poles across Mexico, gigantic clusters of illegal electric lines known as diablitos, or "little devils."
Dentist Benjamin Rodriguez has one hanging outside his window in the Xochimilco neighborhood of Mexico City. Like an evil parasite, it makes his lights flicker and stops his dental drill. Occasionally, the transformer across the street explodes.
"Six or seven times a year, the power just goes out completely," Rodriguez said.
"You call the power company and they come and cut all the illegal lines and the next day they're back up."
Mexico's Energy Department says electricity thieves are bleeding the country's power grid dry, causing millions of dollars of losses, starting fires and crippling the country's efforts to modernize.
Now the government has launched a crackdown on the thieves, installing tamper-proof meters and running ads urging people to report theft.
"To the devil with diablitos!" say TV commercials as cartoon devils with electrical cords for tails prowl the streets of a darkened neighborhood.
In central Mexico alone, the amount of electricity lost, mainly through diablitos, rose 8.7 percent from September 2003 to September 2004, according to Luis de Pablo, director of Central Light and Power. In the rest of the country, it rose 1.3 percent.
In Mexico state, where squatters have built entire cities around the capital, about 300,000 houses are using stolen power, according to the state Electrification Board.
That's equivalent to a city the size of Tucson, and the figure doesn't count the thousands of diablitos serving taco stands, CD sellers and other street vendors.
"It really hurts us, because that money could be going into infrastructure," said Gerardo Lerma, a spokesman for Central Light and Power.
Diablitos were cited as the possible cause of a fire that swept through a shantytown in Juarez in 2003, killing four women, and one that destroyed a public market in Durango in May. On Dec. 2, two firefighters were injured battling a blaze caused by a diablito at a recycling warehouse in the Mexico City suburb of San Juan Tlihuaca.
The government launched its campaign against diablitos in 2003, but honest electricity customers say it has not gone far enough. On Oct. 14, customers from Mexico state protested in front of Central Light and Power, demanding that the company take action against theft, which is inflating their electricity bills.
The illegal lines are an epidemic in low-income places like Xochimilco. Around the central plaza, street vendors have broken open ornamental lampposts and strung lines to their stands. Other lines disappear into homes.
Thieves around the plaza refused to give their names. But many said they have to use the diablitos because the government is slow to install new lines to homes and has only a few electrical outlets for street vendors.
In the past two years, Central Light and Power has installed 500,000 tamper-proof meters and 840 miles of new cable with an outer coating meant to foil electricity thieves, Lerma said.
It has also gotten 250,000 thieves to become paying customers by installing new lines to their homes, he said. Electricity theft is a federal crime but most offenders get off with a warning because overworked prosecutors can't handle the extra cases, officials say.
There is one electric meter on the pole outside the La Vega shoe store. It's connected to outlets used by four sidewalk stands, including that of video-game seller Juan Loiza.
"We use the meter and share the bill, but look at this," he said, pointing at 10 other electric lines that climb the pole like vines. "Who else is going to pay when they can just put up a line?"
Sure beats the hum-drum non-eventful sounds of a solid-state controller!
Is that your specialty - elevator control systems?
Yep. Although I don't work on the automotive side (I do marine ignitions), the principles are the same. About the only thing we watch for besides turns ratio (and making sure the wire insulation has a high enough dielectric) as far as the secondary is the inductance, because too high of an inductance serves as a rev limit due to saturation at high RPM.
What's real fun is to hook a marine ignition (cap ripper @ 250-300VDC output) to an automotive coil (rated with a 12VDC primary, and thus a higher turns ratio). The coil don't last long when you do that, but it is fun to see foot-long sparks!
What's real fun is to hook a marine ignition (cap ripper @ 250-300VDC output) to an automotive coilI used to have a "CD" (Capacitive Discharge ignition kit as built by Delta and Heathkit years ago) on my old Plymouth; one learns of the 'hotter spark' put out by those configurations when pulling the spark plug wire at the plug (as opposed to the distributor) while looking for a 'dead' cyclinder ...
That sounds a lot like the way a transformer works,That's what Tesla's specialty was, AC circuits including 'untuned' circuitry like tranformers and AC motors (he invented the brushless "AC induction motor"):
By the way, a word to the wise, stay away from the pseudo science sites touting Tesla, instead, try a good cited, referenced and reseached book like one of the below:
BOOKS ON OR ABOUT NIKOLI TESLA My Inventions (Nikola Tesla) Advances in Tesla Technology (Nick Begich) Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla (David Hatcher) In Searh of Nikola Tesla (David Peat) Nikola Tesla: A Spark of Genius (Carol Donnermuth-Costa) Nikola Tesla?s Earthquake Machine (Dale Pond) Nikola Tesla Returns (Robert Reichtman) Streams of Lenard and Roentgen (Nikoli Tesla) TCBA Guide to the Colorado Springs Notes (Richard Hull) Tesla: Man Out of Time (Margaret Cheney) Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (Marc Seifer)
I recently saw hundreds of instances of this in Jamaica. In fact, there are psudo-electricians who make a very good living doing this for pay.
As a electrician in the U.S. for many years, I have personally removed and reported such thefts in this country many times.
It is an age old problem.
May I be the first to predict the Telsa coil may win someone a Darwin award someday?
Take a look at their history. They've spent the last two hundred years in revolutions against the wealthy. In each case, they supported politicians who claimed to be "for the people" and "for the working class". In each case, the politician they supported proved to be more greedy, corrupt and dishonest than the prior one. Some might say that in a political sense, they're actually ahead of us in their evolution, not behind, and that they offer a view of America's future if we lose our ability to make critical decisions about those we put in office and instead just support those who tell us what we want to hear.
Actually, I had a TV that did once, but not for long.
Darned entertaining while it lasted, though.
We came close! :-) LOL!!
We didn't leave it on long enough to find out!
Let me get em scanned in. Looking back, we must have been completely whacked to build that monstrosity! LMAO
Was a computer for me. :-)
I had just completed building a Heathkit H8/H9 back in the late 70s. I called a friend and said “get over to my apt quick. I have something to show you”. After he got there, I told him “I bet you never have seen a personal computer do what this one will”! FYI, all day this thing had been working great. Well I fired it up (not thinking fire in the literal sense) and BOOM smoke sparks and flame. The PS blew up. After we both managed to catch our breath (I was laughing so hard I could barely get the dang thing unplugged), he said “yup, I have never seen a personal computer do that”.
I do 3-phase power systems for commercial buildings.
LOL!...trust me...I know exactly what you mean....the words..."That sure blowed-up real good!"...come to mind.
If ya get 'em up send me a ping. Thanks.
And they let YOU control satellites?
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