Wind turbines used to absorb a power surplus?

I remember them adding calcium carbonate to tractor tires to keep the water (H2O is added for weight) from freezing. My tractor has water filled tires, but it seldom freezes here (and when it does, it is only for a couple hours in the morning).

I once spent a few hours in the engine room of the Liberty Ship SS Jeremiah O'Brien while underway - hot is an understatement.

I leave that to you.

I have. Have you?

What is the temperature range where you live? When my 33 psi tires dropped to 28 psi on a zero degree day it set the warning off. Verified with a good pressure gauge.

Come winter I always bumped the pressure a bit to be sure.

Sure. PV=nRT, ignoring the details. 3 PSI is no big deal.

Most pressure sensors sense delta-T from the last time you reset them, which doesn't mean a lot. And the batteries wear out and the sensors get flakey when they are cold. I had mine replaced at some expense and my cold-weather alarms went away.

That's a great old ship. Low pressure triple-expansion piston engine, an antique the day it was built. They still fire it up now and then and go for cruises on the bay. They run even below the design pressure in respect for the ancient machinery. It's a fuel hog.

I think some pics in the movie Titanic were shot in the engine room, even though the Titanic was a turbine.

Yes. I used to design boiler and throttle control systems and went on sea trials. I was about 21 (and looked 15) and they gave me a private cabin. Most of the guys got a cot in the hold.

Sure, they can go bad but some cold morning with the first big drop of the season stop by the local tire shop. People just don't take care of their tires and watch inflation.

"For every 10 degrees of temperature drop, tires will drop 1-2 pounds of pressure. It is important to keep your tires within the recommended PSI to maintain traction, handling and durability."

If the last time you checked your tire pressure was on a 70 degree September day the 20 degree October morning might trigger the TPMS depending on how wide the range is and where you were in the range.

It is a red herring. Heat loss is all that matters. With a theoretical zero heat loss, the temperature would remain the same and the pressure in the boiler would not vary at all.

All that is needed to maintain that pressure is to add exactly the same amount of energy that is lost. Very good insulation will mean little loss and little energy needing to be put in.

You are probably correct there. The insulation will be less than perfect and there may be a lot of loss. It is likely a small amount compared to when the turbines are running though.

Many trucks have the specified tyre pressure marked on the body or mudguard, just above the tyre. I've seen many marked to be at 135 psi.

I cut it too sharp when turning around when harrowing a field and pinched the tire. It was filled with a calcium chloride solution. What a joy that was driving back to the barn with a shower on every revolution. The old Minneapolis-Moline was a joy anyway. There was a leak someplace in the fuel system so you were in a cloud of gas fumes.

The Titanic's centre propeller was turbine driven. The two outer propellers were driven by reciprocating engines.

They increase the force of gravity to 5G. That way the buildings don't float away. Hard to believe but as good an explanation as any other.

Good one. ;)

Very funny. But it does seem possible they could burn off energy.

Don't give the climate change alarmists ideas.

This guy took 1.5 hours to do one meter. Dunno what they charge, my mechanic puts £50/hour on the bill.

Before I got it (only because the last meter broke) I had a £10 device which did the same job of monitoring, wirelessly, the current through a meter tail and sending it to a plugin box in the house.

I was just asking him casually, I can't see him lying. Although as he's a subcontractor, maybe he bills the f****it government that amount.

He said it comes from green tax, which is supposed to be used for green things!

Those only come out once in a blue moon, mine was 6 years ago. I read it myself every 6 months when they emailed me. No cost, all computerised.

Can already be done a level up, just shut off a transformer. How do you think they were going to do it this winter?

That would only work if they did what they do in California, change the rate throughout the day. But they have very uneven power usage for AC units, and very uneven power generation from solar, and no national grid like us.

The UK has a very even power usage, I was surprised how much we use at night and in summer, take a look at the gridwatch website. It's something like a ratio of 3 to 4

Why the f*ck don't they plug it in? For example my (ex) gas meter is right next to the electric box, just run a 5V cable between the meters so one can power the other! Or be clever and generate power from the moving gas.

Why do they need to read them once a month? And why couldn't you have done it?

There are no advantages to me.

Only if it measures each appliance. Although my electric company seems to try to guess - they must assume lights are on in darkness, heating is on more when the weather is colder, so they compare the change in current at didfferent times to work out what appliance it was.

That is the only point of these meters. Mind you, that could easily be done without them being smart. They could just count more "units" at peak rate. When I had a two rate meter, it had a timer and gave me two total readings. They should have just given me a discount for evenings/nights/weekends by making the units count slower.