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?"
Yes, after you insult their country, it's always impressive to get their name wrong.
Perhaps someone will correct me on this, but my understanding of the Tesla coil is that it is the electrical equivalent of the playground swing.
These aren't "illegal" lines, merely undocumented lines.
Wrong, these devices tap the lines by transformer action, at a different voltage, they need a different (in this case smaller) number of turns. I have even heard of people putting these sapping transformers in bird houses and raising them near the power line. They don't need to be touching. Oh, and changing the voltage on the line requires re-engineering of every transformer the utility provides and they should look at the size of the insulators on every pole, very expensive.
Good plan, but no plan is perfect, and many of the paying customers would also not get the message. A 50% increase may not be enough either, lots of equipment could be built to handle this.
A better plan would be to put regulators on all paying customers lines and then you could do your high voltage burn on the illegals, but the regulators are expensive and it may be easier to just pay some other poor people to cut the wires.
American Anti-gravity has an ongoing project to create "lifters". The book has detailed construction information. For brevity, you can see the web site and MPEG videos of test flights here.
This is a lifter in flight. The power is fed to the corona wire on the top of the triangle. There are thread tethers below to keep it from flying out of the box. The lifter is just some balsa wood sticks, aluminum foil and some 30 gauge magnet wire for the corona wire. Power input is 30,000 VDC at 1 mA.
Which is why I was truly only kidding. I know no plan like that could ever be implemented without the power company exposing themselves up to vast liabilities.
Still, it would be satisfying, if only in the short term.
LOL! You're probably right...sigh..
Then why do they take them down?
I think you missed my ironic commentary on "illegal" vs. "undocumented" immigrants.
Regarding the backward state of Mexico.
I think it is because the Mexican government discourages and sometimes outright forbids the importation of technology that would get them out of the stone ages.
Something about the theory of keeping the masses busy so they will not have the time or energy to rise up and overthrow the status quo.... And let the excess migrate elsewhere!!!
Ah... I follow.
Thanks for the link.
Very interesting subject
It is always nice to think that once in a while justice prevails. lol
"I love the smell of burning resistors in the morning....It smells like....Justice!"
I like Tupperville's commercial for winn dixie too (in Auburn country), but the smell of overheat in an electronics circuit is ladden with too many bad memories for me. (And a lot of the time my fault!) *sighing* Take care Sam, FRegards.
Tesla coils work through the 'magic' of tuned 'tank' circuits - what we call in the trade a "tuned tank (LC) circuit"
LC (Inductor and Capacitor) or 'tank' (resonant circuits) have the ability to store energy, alternately between the magnetic field in the coil and then alternately in the electric field in the capacitor.
Excitation of the secondary 'resonant' tank is done via the un-tuned, low voltage, high current primary; the primary and the secondary are coupled via a magnetic field (magnetic flux).
High voltages are developed via this mechanism: a slow-moving voltage source is applied to the primary, the current builds up in the primary - and then is interrupted, this creates a 'step' current function containing MUCH high frequency energy which is 'captured' by the secondary winding which is linked to the primary magnetically; high voltage is produced according to the well known equation:
e (in volts) = L (in Henrys) * di (the change in current in Amperes) / dt (the change in time in seconds)
di
e = L * ----
dt
How about this elevator controller. That's a 40HP motor I'm leaning on, with open cable sheaves, etc. Notice the dates on the control drawing.Looks like the controller board and motor up at Tanglewood Resort (up on Lake Texoma) elevator ...
I don't suppose Tesla coils have practical applications. (?)Aside from easily generating high voltages easily - the principles incorprated in a Teslas coil are embodied in every day items -
- in that tuned circuits where primary and secondaries are linked by magnetic flux/a magnetic field are incorporated in everyday AM and FM broadcast radios and their transmitters to automotive (spark) ignition systems (even though the secondaries of the coild are *not* strictly tuned, they do 'ring' owing to the stray interwire capacitance that exists in any physcial coil).
This one is in a building on Maple St. near downtown Dallas.
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