Electric Grid: The Balance Of Power

The “morning news” on TV costs over 100-watts per hour. My smart meter read .220Wh after an hour and one-half, and I only had the TV-set on. No lights, no fridge, no PC, no heat or a/c, nothing extra turned on but two LED clocks. I recently trimmed my utilities, and the on/off-timer on the fridge helped greatly. I looked for the next big thing, and it was not the PC. It was the TV news!

I noticed that, particularly, when the news reported hybrids are not “emission-free”; because they said the electric grid still used resources that caused emissions. They, then, said the modern hybrid (in electric mode), or EV-car, averages about 80-mph, as they noted that equivalence to gasoline engines due to those resources on the grid that cause emissions. They didn't release the kilowatt/mile ratio they used, not that included any zero-emission percentage.

Are commercials zero-emission? I wondered about what percentage of those kilowatts per hour were spent on commercials between TV-news breaks. That seemed overly complicated for anybody to find. Then, I remembered one legislature movement that wanted some special signal while commercials play. There is one on some channels, yet the ideal version sends feedback to the electric grid much like how the “smart-meter” lets the utility company match power usage to appliances and components. Based on the above ability of the news' 80mph calculation, such features lets the utility company determine the cost of TV commercials.

“Long Live The Kings”

– Power-Balance Pavilion & NBA Advertisement

I think that known cost of TV commercials lets us sort out those that are helpful advertisements. I watched “The Voice” for the first time, and my impression is that there were way more commercials then any radio station played. Let's put this in perspective, with today's solar-cell technology, my radio runs on battery charge for hours, and we have known battery technologies that recharges by photovoltaics (PV). How often do we worry about too many commercials on the radio when they drain the batteries too fast? When you buy your next set of batteries, do you wonder how much you pay for advertisements? Do the commercials pay you for that battery usage? You know who really gets paid.

The money TV-stations earned from commercials pay for their broadcast, yet we have not seen any of that money pay for your utility-bill that includes the reception of those commercials. Here is my main point, it costs X-amount for the broadcast, and it costs Y-amount for your TV reception, yet that Y-amount multiples by Z-number of viewers. Quick, what is the equivalent “mph” of that X+YZ value?  I imagined the answer qualifies TV news as not “emission-free,” as they reported, likewise.

I typed seven other blogs over the last week, yet I published only this one after I turned-off the TV. I'm distracted, more than usual this week, by all the pavilions, and gazebos, especially at the parks, without any photovoltaic system. I also thought about the PV version of static-IPv6 wi-fi routers and repeaters with PV-rechargeable battery systems. Apropos above, I wondered if Google would let us put AdSense on our EVs, like “lease-this” timeshare/taxi. One, or more, of these ideas includes the un-demented, exotic phrase: “[BLDP] and recreation”.