When we were first married, we lived in a mobile home. My father in
law helped me obtain wire to connect the mobile home to the power poles
meter base/main breaker. He obtained much more wire than what we
needed, so we coiled the wire, about 5 or 6 loops of wire, each
conductor the size of the pinkie finger. Behind our property was a
field and down the middle of the field were high tension wires. One day
I noticed the power meter was running backwards! I kept watching in
disbelief, then in a few minutes it started running forward again.
I went in to see what was running. Our clock radio was on, the clock on
the stove was one, the smoke detectors were on...then I heard it, the
refrigerator was on. Once it kicked off, I rechecked the meter, and it
was running backwards again.
That coil of wire was picking up enough stray energy to power the
two clocks and smoke detectors, but when the refrigerator kicked on, we
were using too much and the meter started running forward. I wish I
had the money back then to purchase more wire and build a larger air
core transformer!!!