>>28994234
>Firstly, what is step potential and what is the best method to safely retreat from fallen live powerlines?
Keep your feet together and do small jumps. Be careful to not fall over.
Im not sure if i can explain that to you in english but if an active powerline lying around the voltage gets down the farher away you get from it. If you take a 1m step you will experience 2 different potentials and thus voltage will run through you.
>Secondly, what's the worst thing you've seen in commercial/residential switchboards? Seen any illegal power siphoning before?
Never saw illegal siphoning before but a few houses that did entirely run on one phase only and the owners just putting in bigger fuses because the small ones blew up all the time. The wires where hot and the wood around them got black.
>Lastly, can you harvest energy from high voltage powerlines?
Absolutely. You just need to play around with different coils and distances to the lines, ideally parallel to them.
If we shut down one system on one side of the pylon you'll get voltages of around 30kv on the shut down side just because of the induction of the active side.
The amperage is not that high but it still can kill you easily.
>Also, how cooked internally do you get from a single arc like this?
It highly depends on a lot of factors but in the worst case you're dead in a matter of seconds/minutes. You'll probably be conscious but the flash alone from that distance can blind you and even fuck up your ears. You'l probably be shellshocked and the inner burns like cooked blood is highly toxic and will kill you.
