Serious question from a beginner in electronics. For reasons I do not fully understand, I have become fixated on the idea of collecting small amounts of electricity from “interesting” sources. I don’t mean “free energy”, instead, I mean things like extracting a few mV from being so close to a AM radio tower using two tuned loop antennas in phase with each other, or getting a few mV from the rain’s kinetic energy with PTFE and using two electrodes which are shorted when a drop of rain hits it. In short, I’ve done small experiments to confirm that I can get a few mV and enough to get me excited but not much more. I know I’m not going to get much power out of this, but I’ve been able to charge a NiMH battery a few mV by being a quarter mile from an AM radio station with my antenna setup. It would be fascinating to me if I could store these small charges in something like a 5V USB power brick eventually.
The smarter idea would be for me to harvest energy with the sun or from the wind or a stream. I’m tinkering with this as well, but larger amounts of electricity scare me for right now. I guess I’ve seen enough experimental sources of harvesting electricity and I’ve gotten the itch to invent, which is a dangerous itch for a newbie like me to have.
The best advice I’ve seen online (ok, it was ChatGPT) is that it’s just not worth it to work with such small amounts of electricity, because the equipment required is too expensive and sophisticated (e.g, devices to read the charge of a capacitor without discharging it) to make anything that’s efficient enough to be worthwhile. Would you agree? Do you know of some other fascinating source of gathering electricity that I should also waste lots of time on?
I just have all these electronic components and magnets and when I move them together the numbers on multimeter get bigger. it’s neat.
@rarely the historical reports of issues I've read about are from mid-late 20th century in areas near high power LF/MF stations that would be in the nearfield - from the Wiki article
> absorption of radiation in the near field by adjacent conducting objects detectably affects the loading on the signal generator (the transmitter).
so it would be noticeable, and viewed as an undesirable thing. Harvesting (small) amounts of power in the far field would not cause issues.
@rarely Temporarily lighting small lamps from nearfield RF with a TX power of some kW is definitely possible, a family friend who was the engineer at Radio Caroline in the 1960s did it on board the ship as a demonstration to visitors; but didn't use any antenna nor leave the lamps around to light up the deck (it would have created hassle with unwanted stray RF, and there was plenty about already!). Its not common these days as TX sites are designed to keep people out of the nearfield for safety.
@rarely the claims of "poor reception" caused by "large scale" nearfield power harvesting are from Communications Ministry officers from some decades ago (I mistakenly referred to modern Ofcom rather than the British Post Office which investigated these things until the 1980s), it is possible they just wanted to discourage this practice for the safety of those involved whilst not also opening a can of worms about human exposure to RF (it was Cold War era and much info was classified)
Hold the phone! You're telling me now that the government lies to people?!
I have also heard of this tale of "not-spots" but have found no evidence myself. The SWR and near field antennas stuff you mentioned makes a lot of sense, I just didn't understand how I could be stealing electrons meant for others. I mean, if it worked that way wouldn't trees also creat not spots, especially if they get to a certain height?! Anyway, thanks for the info, and.. 73?