Wind turbines used to absorb a power surplus?

My electric bill varies monthly and there's a graphic of my consumption versus the same month in the prior year. I never gave it thought but it's some sort of remote reading. There are no little footprints in the snow leading up to the meter.

I doubt they are using power-line communication so there must be someone driving around to collect the data.

In CT a car drove up the street and read the meters. Electric monthly, water quarterly. Here, it transmits to a spot in the community that has a power supply and a couple of antenna. Electric use is transmitted daily.

I have some but it's because the electric company sent out LED replacements before the original batch of CFSs burned out.

Mine was metered but the council, the operation who supplys our water didnt bother to read the meters essentially because the cost of the meter readers wasnt warranted. But then the state govt forced them to read the meters, essentially to discourage wasting water.

Most smartmeters use the cellphone networks.

There was, a few years ago, also a lot ofadverse publicity, but iirc it was nonsense about radiation (even though the transmission is only for a few seconds once a month, far less than loads of other things.) So in many or all places they made smart meters optional but if you didnt' get one, they charge extra, to pay for the guy to come and read the meter. I don't rmemeber any percentages.

Otherwise, billing and payment is the same in any given area. Maybe it varies in different parts of the country but I can't imagine how.

I don't think the meter is smart. It's definitely not digital.

My electric company provides readings by the hour. Around 5 pm each day, the previous day's readings are available in an email. I'm supposed to be able to view that online, but it has quit working and the electric company won't fix it, or is unable to. To top it off, when I try to communicate with them by email, they reject my emails. When I try using the web site message facility to fix the email, it won't accept the information from the email bounce message, claiming it's a URL! I'm left with trying to resolve all this crap over the phone.

Is it no wonder why I hate technology?

I guess I'm lucky. I live somewhere that water just falls out of the sky. There's so much water, that they drilled a hole in my yard, and the water level sets just 10 feet below the surface. They call it a well.

Sometimes we have so much, it threatens to come right up to our doors.

How can there ever be water waste? We worry more about having too much water!

That still won't end the problem of those on pre-payment meters having to meet their peak (winter) costs up-front, while those of us on monthly Direct Debits can average the cost out over the whole year.

Mine had new tails too, despite their being nothing wrong with the old ones. When the previous dumb meter was changed the previous year, they added blue and brown identifiers to the ends of the existing grey sheathed cables. Apparently that is no longer good enough and when they later changed it to a Smart-meter, they had to change them to new blue and brown sheathed cables.

My suppliers doesn't arrange to fit an isolator either - that's an extra £130 if you want one!!!

That is a small toy, only 450 MW, 3600 MWh.

It will support only 100 - 200 wind turbines for 8 hours.

To fully back up all US wind turbines, 270 such dams would be required In practice there is not a complete calm area all over the whole US at once, so maybe 50 to 100 such dams are required that is 1-2 such dams in each US state. However, this requires good high voltage lines carrying power at least 1000 km into calm areas.

Zero extra cost to me for fitting the switch.

It will not end the problem with the ongoing debt either as pre-payment customers may have the same tariffs for 1kWh after July but the pre payment will also need to cover x% of the ongoing debt.

You just need to point out that most peoples Wi-fi will operate at the dangerous 5GHz.

The 5G mobile phone (cell phone) masts causing Covid. Here in the UK the government took the opportunity to insert a tracking device under the skin with every Covid vaccination.

Although that would be true of those on a credit meter too.

I depends where you are and who you are with. They definitely wanted to charge to fit one for me.

I ended up fitting one myself. As the existing consumer unit and the new switch are both plastic cased and the whole lot is in a brick cupboard with wooden back board and doors, there is nothing metallic to accidentally short to, other than the earth connection at the diagonally opposite corner of the cupboard. I thus felt reasonably safe, wearing thick rubber gloves, moving the existing tails, live, into the switch and adding new tails from switch to CU, before they came to change the meter.

I don't think the OP intended to suggest that this was used as a way to store energy, just as a way to get rid of it.

Sylvia.

I wonder if we covered the world in wind farms, would we use up some wind and the weather would be nicer?