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?"
Extremely, extremely corrupt government and judical system. Sorry to sound like a liberal's wet dream, but the rich really do own it all--the land, the police, the judges, etc. The poor cannot hope to aspire to anything more than being a waiter on American tourists.
It is as if in mexico, the word "to get", and "to earn", and "to steal" are all one in the same.
Yup. My granddad went to prison for a year for making moonshine during prohibition in SE Alabama.
My Tesla coil was more conservative. The secondary was a 2 inch diameter, 30 inch long mailing tube. I spent 7 hours winding the secondary with 36 gauge magnet wire. It looked like smooth copper foil. The capacitor was built with a stack of 12" mirror tiles. Spark gap with 10d nails. Primary with some 12 gauge wire stripped from spare Romex. A 15,000 volt neon transformer was used to excite the primary. I powered it up inside an 8 X 8 foot bedroom at a friend's house. The snaky violet discharges went all the way to the walls. After days of work, the total run time was under 5 minutes. Too much RFI.
Mexico is a rather wealthy nation. What a pity it is run into the ground by the elites.
When you don't enforce the law...
The direct buried primary line would be unusable to the power thieves, unless they had their own transformer, and the knowledge and tools to tap into the primary feed...Highly Unlikely!
We used tungsten alloy bolts for our spark gap and power pole transformers hooked to a copper busbar we bent into a coil with plexiglass sheet insulators. :-)
The secondary coil was wound on a cardboard form used to pour concrete bridge columns.
We too only fired it up for a short time. LOL!
thats how they do it for gas lines. ie Regulator at the meter Rarely do you see alot of gas theft.
Ammonia is a diffrent animal because of meth, you'll get idiots doing homemade hot-taps on high pressure ammonia pipelines and installing bleeders so they can steal pure ammonia
I once asked that question of a cute girl from Mexico City when I was in college. I didn't get anywhere.
Reminds me of a NY City story, turns out YEARS ago a "smart" landlord discovered that his power meter would operate in reverse if the wires were switched. So if you reverse the wires the meter would count down instead of up. So a landlord would run the meter in reverse a few days. A few geniuses just kept the meter running backwards and the meter read like it was creating electricity.
(they don't run backwards anymore)
In Miami, there are occasional house fires where people use jumper cables to bypass a meter which has been cut off for lack of payment.
How does a Tesla coil work? I have always been curious but never took the time to learn how to build one.
Only one got it right, NatakuX in #22, "Extremely, extremely corrupt government and judical system."
Or 440 AC triple phased. Lets see who lands on their ass.
If those things work, then why aren't we using them?
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