Wind turbines used to absorb a power surplus?

Using your argument about 15 minutes for a smart meter installation per house not costing a lot the 30 seconds to read a meter once every 12 months means that the payback time for just the labour is more more than

A gas meter will need a new battery in 10 years, or less

"Up to days at a time".

The UK has very litttle coal fired power generation anymore.

And the gas fired power generation is easy to modulate.

Fraid so.

alan_m snipped-for-privacy@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote

And that is a completely insane thing to do, tax everyone, pump that money thru the bureaucracy and staight back to precisely the same people that it came from in the first place.

Only advantage is that in theory it forces people to have CFL light bulbs which they would otherwise not bother with and might see some use them given they are 'free'

We were never actually stupid enough to have a green tax and our electricity suppliers did hand out free CFL light bulbs. I ony ever used a couple of the dozens I got given.

The LEDs save energy so make everyone's costs go down.

We only have a few incandescents left. Either old, very rarely used bulbs, or one small incandescent on a string of LEDs to make them dim properly. Some "dimmable" LEDs and some dimmers don't work together.

Nope, a senile rabid pom.

Yep, this 1,500 MW scheme will make up for the UK shortfall when the wind doesn't blow. The difference for the UK wind between blowing and not blowing is close to 15,000 MW so to just backup the existing windmills we need 10 of these pumped storage facilities. When even more windmills are built the shortfall when the wind is absent requires perhaps 20 to 30 of these facilities. And what happens for when the wind doesn't blow for 14 days and the pumped water head runs dry after a couple of days?

This scheme probably only makes financial sense if we rely on windmills where they can sell back the electricity at 10x the going rate when there is no wind.

There is, pumped hydro. Problem is that the UK has f*ck all suitable sites for that.

alan_m snipped-for-privacy@admac.myzen.co.uk> wrote

Ours are read 4 times a year and it takes a lot more than 30 seconds to read.

But you probably would have got the bulbs cheaper by purchasing them yourself rather than overpaying on your bills and then being given some of your own money back (via bulbs) minus an administration charge.

There was never "FREE" LED bulbs - you just paid for them in a convoluted way.

The only incandescent bulb I have is in the microwave, I have 2 CFL in the loft and switched on perhaps twice a year for 10 minutes at a time, all the rest are LED.

Prior to smart meters, ours were read once a month. The meter reader had to trudge from house to house--they're about 40 meters apart on my road, although it's twice that from my house to the one to the south. Multiply that by 155 million customers in the U.S. It adds up.

There are other advantages for the consumer and for the power company. I can find out what I'm drawing in much more detail, so I can see how much it costs to run various appliances. The power company has implemented time-of-day pricing, now that it has that information.

What kind of bulb do you have in your oven?

Tim

If I pick up a few free bulbs, I don't think my electric bill will go up. Statistically, it probably goes down.

CFLs fail when the electrolytic caps blow up, usually from turn-on surge. Sometimes the tube fails.

Elections.

There are probably thousands of CFL's in their original boxes stored in cupboards in houses in the UK that have NEVER been used!

Gas hob Combined microwave/oven

The company I worked for at the time was a distributor for Trabon automatic lubrication systems. I didn't have much to do with that part of the business but tagged along with the crew doing the installation one day.

It was impressive. There were many workstations throughout the cavern each equipped with every Rigid pipe tool known to man, all virginal. That was '71. I wonder what it looks lie today?

All you need is a river and a handy mountain.

Where I live it was more like once every two years. Knock on the door with torch in hand, read the figures on two meters, figures entered in hand held pad, goodbye.

I'm in a power co-op that sent out CFLs and the LEDs. The mail person really loved the pile of boxes suddenly appearing to be delivered.

The co-op also pays out a dividend. It isn't much, usually around $50, but it's refreshing getting money back. It is associated with the Bonneville Power Authority so we weren't hit with massive rate increases after the deregulation fiasco.

Historically it goes back to Roosevelt's Rural Electrification Act of

I'm waiting for the Rural Fiber Cable Act but I don't think that's going to happen.