[apetersson]

I suppose not. If my neighbour has a water sprinkler, it's not theft if I put a tree where it spills on my property. It's rather debatable if the strong electric fields are a disturbance to the environment and the power company should be obligated to insulate better, potentially leading to higher transmission efficiency.

[greyface-]

What if your neighbor has a water sprinkler that is watering their own lawn, adjacent to yours, initially with no spillage, and you install a big array of fans on your property to induce air currents that cause it to start spilling over onto yours?

[arwineap]

What would the fan be in this case?

I'm feeling like the initial analogy fit the premise better.

[greyface-]

The fan is analogous to the antenna - it changes the RF landscape, such that a small amount of energy that would otherwise have stayed in the transmission line begins to flow into the antenna, similar to how the fan changes the air current landscape.

[arwineap]

Would this still be the case if the power lines were properly isolated?

It feels a lot like spillage to me, antenna or not, but I admit my emf is weak

[batch12]

Wouldn't this be the same or greater if the fence is grounded?

[cjdell]

Is this similar to "transformer action"?

[littlestymaar]

From a physics perspective, the initial analogy doesn't hold at all though.

The antenna array is actually distorting the electromagnetic field and whatever is plugged to it is actively draining power from the power line. If there's no antenna the power line lose no energy through the field[1], it's not as if you were collecting lost power.

[1] in fact, you can even say that the energy is not carried in the cables themselves but in the air surrounding the cables!

[arwineap]

Would that be the case if the power lines were properly isolated?

[littlestymaar]

Define “properly isolated”. From the electric current perspective, the cables are properly insulated, and the insulating material is air. But here what's at stake is electromagnetic (EM) waves generated by the oscillating current flowing throw the cables, and while EM shields can reduce these I'm not sure it would even be possible to shield an entire cable in order to contain the field, and even if it was theoretically possible, it's almost certain that it wouldn't be realistic at the scale of a power grid.

[BehindBlueEyes]

The tree will grow roots to tap water closer to the source, ignoring property lines. I don't think fans are needed for the analogy to work.

[littlestymaar]

> If my neighbour has a water sprinkler, it's not theft if I put a tree where it spills on my property

From a physics perspective It's not the same thing at all: with the water sprinkler, the water is lost no matter what for your neighbors. But with the electric field, there's no power loss unless you tap into it.

To get back to your water sprinkler example, it's as if your neighbors' hosepipe got trough your garden to get to his sprinkler: you can argue that this is a environmental disturbance to your garden, but that doesn't allow you to take water from the hosepipe for your own use.