Have you ever stolen powr?

[George2615]

Never stole power but I do get robbed every month by the power co.

 

[JD 4520]

Never stole power but I do get robbed every month by the power co.

Isn't that the truth.

 

[jinman]

Guilty as charged. In my twenties, I couldn't afford to pay the electric bill once and the power company shut off my power. At the time, I had a few fish tanks in the house and I didn't want the fish to die from the cold. I went out to the meter, cut the green tag they put there to keep you from tampering with it, pulled the meter out, removed the plastic sleeves they had placed over the meter lugs and plugged the meter back in. I wrote down the meter reading as well. Two months later, when I had enough money I called the power company and asked them to turn on the power. I placed the sleeves back on the lugs, twisted the dials to read the same as they were when I first took it apart and replaced the green tag so that they couldn't tell it was cut unless they looked very closely.

Worked as planned. Don't regret doing it and would do it again if it was a matter of emergency, no sweat. :cool2:

Dennis, in the old days back in the 50s/60s, I saw lots of houses under construction with no meter set in the meter base. I've witnessed an electrician taking the cover off and putting jumpers across the lugs using heavily insulated 4 ga wire. That allowed carpenters to use thier power saws. Today, generators are more common and you see less of this than back when I was a kid.

 

[tallyho8]

Since I charged my phone at the airport for 20 minutes and the charger says the input is .2 amps at 110/220 volts and figuring that electricity is 15 cents per killowatt hour, how much electricity did I steal? I forgot how to do these calculations about 20 years ago and am wondering if I set a new low record on the amount of power I stole.

But, I am smart enough that if an officer confronts me, I will not get smart with him and will sincerely apologize for my indiscretions.

 

[k0ua]

Since I charged my phone at the airport for 20 minutes and the charger says the input is .2 amps at 110/220 volts and figuring that electricity is 15 cents per killowatt hour, how much electricity did I steal? I forgot how to do these calculations about 20 years ago and am wondering if I set a new low record on the amount of power I stole.

But, I am smart enough that if an officer confronts me, I will not get smart with him and will sincerely apologize for my indiscretions.

You consumed .2 amps X 120 volts or about 24 watts or /1000 = .024 Kilowatts. so you said the price was about $0.15 per kilowatt hour so 20 minutes would be 1/3 of of an hour. so your electrical rate would be $0.05 for this 20 minute period for a Kilowatt. But you didn't use anywhere near a Kilowatt you used .024 KilowattsX $0.15/3 So you consumed $0.0012 or expressed in words slightly over 1/10 of a cent in electricity.

 

[k0ua]

Now our friend with the plug in car would have (guestimate) have pulled about 10 amps at 120 volts or about 1200 watts or about 1.2 Kilowatts at the $0.15 rate would be about $0.18. However he said he only had if plugged in for the 20 minutes, which is again 1/3 of an hour so $0.18/3= $0.06. so about 6 cents.

 

[buickanddeere]

So the law enforcement community is also entitled to enforce bad manners via the criminal justice system?

 

[dirt ditch]

Right or wrong it happens every day.

 

[Green Acres Homestead]

I think the whole situation was over blown, especially the felony warrant, but he was guilty of stealing, no different that if he'd siphoned gas out of your vehicle. I've never charged my cell phone anywhere other than my house, truck or garage and while I have plugged my laptop in while at a few schools, I asked first and was given permission

I agree. It was overblown. These big companies are bulling every chance they get. Perhaps somebody should go on change.org and make a partition.

 

[dmccarty]

...
Now as far as taxes and the fellow who makes his own biodiesel goes, were the feds checking race cars for the fuel, or checking all the racer's tow vehicles? If I remember correctly, it should not have made any difference as automotive fuel doesn't get dyed, and the home fuel isn't dyed either. It's the stuff that goes into your home heating systems and dedicated off road AG equipment that gets the dye added.

The officers were checking all of the diesel vehicles. Mostly there were going after the diesel pickups pulling trailers to the races. I can find the link with the story, but the page is empty. What I remember is that the guy was using home made Biodiesel, or maybe WVO, he had stickers on his cars about Bio/WVO, he was asked about what was in his tank, and he started talking...

What shocks me is that this appeared to have happened in 2007! I thought it was a "few" years ago meaning two, three, or maybe four years back. :laughing::laughing::laughing: What is funny is that I could find quite a few conversations about the guy being fined and people saying that it was an urban legend. :laughing::laughing::laughing: It does look like the Feds and NC have changed the law so that this is no longer an offense. Which I find offensive since this is one tax that does make sense. The road tax does, for the most part, go to fixing and building roads which Bio/WVO users drive on and they should pay there fair share.

Later,
Dan