FREE ELECTRICAL POWER from the grid and its legal

Sometimes one starts to wonder at alternative agendas of the powers that be when one has enough knowledge to SEE those agenda’s [ or cover ups ]. Now I have been doing
Electrics for neigh on 40 years [ yes, I’m that old ] and I can follow certain reasoning by authorities when new rules and/or equipment is introduced. There are many safety reasons for installing breakers and the like, on live equipment – like your house.
Over current breakers protect your house [ and you ] from shorts or faulty household products. If the active shorts to earth or neutral, the breaker trips like it should to protect you from being electrocuted should active make the metal case of that kettle – live. Ouch!! So too, over voltage breakers protect your new TV or computer from being fried like a big Mac; after all, something like 480vac instead of 240vac don’t do the gear any favors. Now ELD’s [Earth Leakage Detectors] seem like a good idea because they trip the breakers BEFORE a short circuit appears that might start a fire IF the short current is less than the trip current [ up to 20 Ampere – and that can cook something right smartly ]
So too, it trips if more that 3Milliampere is detected from either active or neutral TO the earth line. Gee, it all sounds so reassuring don’t it ?. Can’t be too careful these days what with some shoddy china products and if it saves one life, it’s well worth the ELD.
Now lets examine some of the hidden agenda of ELD’s here [ What !!! there’s a hidden agenda ? come on man, you must be paranoid ] Unless your totally conversant with most aspects of electrical safety, you won’t get it so I’ll try my best to spell it out and; at the same time, tell you how this bullsh*t can let you take raw electrical power from the grid –without illegally fiddling with the meters, and get it for free. The circuit to raw free power is in the inherent fault of the grid itself; what’s more, ELD’s are designed to stop you getting it, should you figure it out by design or accident.
We have 3 wires in an electrical circuit. Active, neutral and the earth. Most lighting circuits don’t need the earth as by design; there is nothing to earth [or ground]. EG, light bulb sockets in the ceiling. Some lighting circuits [fluro’s] have an earth to the metal case because the case IS metal and could short to active, making the case live when switched on. ALL power points have all three wires even though you might plug something into them that is double insulated anyway [power drills].
Now your distribution grid consists of many step down transformers which ALSO have an earth. Because of the way the power grid is designed [or LACK there of] there is never a perfect balance of power between the earth [ earths] and the return neutral line all the way to the power station. In essence, there is always a residual VOLTAGE between the neutral and the earth of every stage of the power grid. This voltage is called the balance factor voltage or rather, the un-balanced factor. Check it out for yourself – put a multimeter across the neutral and earth of a power point in YOUR house and you should see a voltage ranging from a few volts [ normal ] to as much as 30vac or even as high as 170vac in extreme cases. This voltage is limited by the balanced factor in your particular area. It’s dependent of several things. How bad the grid is in your area, load at certain times of day, the state of the nearest transformer etc etc.
What’s REALLY important is that the limitation of what you can draw in power from this ‘Phantom’ circuit is only limited to what breakers are IN the earth circuit from your house all the way to the feed transformer. Now you see why it’s mandatory to have ELD’s in this circuit that ‘trip’ when more than 3 milliampere is drawn from it.. Before we HAD ELD’S, the number of people injured [let alone killed] from leaky appliances was near enough to zero. Only the freakiest of freak conditions [one in a million] would result in a hazard and ONLY because, the object was not earthed [TV antennae for one]. It would have been far simpler and cheaper to make it mandatory that everything made of metal attached to a house was effectively earthed somewhere to true ground.
Are we all getting the picture yet ???
Now the state of QLD grids is a freaking mess because of poor or NO maintenance at sub stations and power factor transformers in the street. In theory, if you have NO ELD because you live in a house prior to it’s introduction AND you are not obliged to fit one by law if the system is in good condition – you can draw power from this ‘phantom’ circuit. The circuit is not metered as both neutral and earth should be under ideal perfect power conditions, the same !!. The piss poor condition of the grid means that unbalanced power is all over the shop like a mad person.
Since the voltage of this power can vary with a myriad of conditions as stated at any time of the day, we need an electronic regulator that can tolerate voltage from – say – 15vac all the way up to line voltage [240 vac]. The amount of raw power that you can draw is also dependent on several conditions; like how good an earth your house wiring has [ that’s that slim copper tube bolted to the outside wall of your house with a heavy green wire soldered to it- look for it, you’ll find it soon enough]
This close ground tube is designed to help eliminate unbalanced factors between your house neutral and true earth in some cases but in most cases, is essentially the ONLY true earth in your house wiring. Let’s pretend you DON’T have an ELD breaker in your house, just the standard safety circuit breakers [or old block fuses]. If you got hold of a muti- input voltage regulator that delivered 12DC output at a regulated current of – say – 20 Ampere maximum, you can draw 480 Watts from the circuit FREE!!! If the ground circuit to the unbalanced transformer feeding the street could support it. [ there is no reason why it wouldn’t because this feeder transformer could be feeding 1000 houses – that’s a sh*t load of power] Just calculate how much power you COULD draw. Each house can draw 40 Ampere – times 1000 YIKES!!!. If the balanced earth to neutral factor was out by just 0.1%, you can still draw 40 Ampere at the low voltage of 24 volts for example; holy cow! That’s nearly 1000 Watts of power at 12volts DC. The mind boggles.
If you have an ELD fitted, as far as I am aware, there is no law that sez you cannot have a bypass switch fitted to it for house wiring maintenance. In any event, legal or not, fitting one is undetectable as you are NOT drawing power from the true power feed circuit, nor are you by passing any metering. How many budding or long time electricians have figured this one out ?. A perfect feeder grid would eliminate this crap but as we all know, Queenslanders have been screwed by the Government for years taking power profits and neglecting the grid till it’s in a shocking state [Pardon the pun].
That’s it – nothing hard for us techo’s. So there really is a hidden alternative agenda for making it compulsory too fit ELD’s to new and some existing houses [ you can only draw less than 3 ma of the unbalanced power on this phantom circuit before the ELD trips and plunges you into darkness ]. Because the power factor is so bad between neutral and earth in some cases, someone could be killed IF [ and only if ] the NEUTRAL ONLY somehow is shorted to the metal case of some equipment [ toaster ], and IF it’s still plugged into the house socket [ even switched off ] and IF the earth wire to the case of this appliance is somehow absent and IF you touch it and are earthed, and IF the voltage is high enough to give you a ‘boot’ – above 90 Volts - and IF the ground circuit is good enough to pass more than 3 ma for a sustained period. That’s a bucket load of ‘if’s’ and just doesn’t become a credible factor in any sane persons book.