Consider this: Even if every end-user supplied by Power Company “X” had every appliance and light off, every open cirucit is “energized” with a voltage. And, the source of that voltage is from a fossil fuel or nuclear plant that muct keep the steam turbines running.
So, doesn’t the non-use of electricity still costly to the power company? (And, how could you meter non-usage?) - Jinx
I WAG you’ll say it’s built into their operating costs when they work up a budget…
Utilities DO charge for voltage. What they actually charge for is kilowatts/hour. Watts = volts * amps. As there are 220 v lines and such, both watts and amps are variables.
Couple minor nitpicks. Firstly, they bill for kilowatt-hours not kilowatts PER hour. The one is the inverse of the other–they are related but have different meanings. Secondly, for AC circuits with other than a purely resistive load, watts = volts x amps x power factor. Power factor basically expresses the difference in phase between voltage and current in reactive loads, like motors and transformers. For residential billing purposes, power factor can generally be ignored, but for industrial use where very large motors and other heavy reactive loads are employed, power factor billing becomes important. Power companies like the power factor to be one (the same as a purely resistive load), since that makes their equipment happy. Industry employs inductive-capacitive networks to make their power factor as close to one as possible, both because the power company likes it that way, and because it is less expensive to operate.
The voltage is a potential similar to water pressure in your house. The water company has water to send at the water tower but your not using it. The same is true for power plants. They generate electricity that gives all lines a potential expressed as voltage. The potential can be expressed at everyone’s home for almost no cost beyond the fact that they are sending current through what you wish to use, and that requires a push which is the voltage. It wouldn’t be cost effective to supply a potential to places if only you used power and you turned a light on for one day every month. As long as the distribution center is sending current to people the potential will be there at little waste of additional resources.
We have a minimum monthly charge, even if there is no usage indicated on the meter.
Many utilities charge industry for things such as contracted demand, and a higher rate for exceeding that demand.
Some companies are so large, they also pay for standby supplies, or guarunteed supplies, this means that if there is for any reason a power outage or line failure, the utility may need to shut dow some parts of the network, and will shut down the guarunteed users last, if possible - this is called ‘load shedding’ prioritising.
Extremely large companies, consuming in excess of around 16MWatts may also pay differant rates for their power on an hourly, or even minute by minute basis.
The very largest, such as induction furnace users also will have to inform the utility when they are about to put a major unit online and get permission first, so that they do not drag the network down.
There is a certain amount of network load, even if no-one is actually consuming power, along with power being used by the utility itself in running all the associated plant to produce power, this is why there is usually a network charge, which is also called a standing charge.
What voltage in the lines costs is reflected in leakage. You cannot sustain a voltage without leakage, and the leakage is reflected in a spinning meter.
The power companies do charge for the fact that they maintain a line voltage. The charge is usually included under “overhead.” Merely maintaing the voltage, for example, requires that the line capacitance must be charged, discharged and recharged to the opposite polarity every cycle. The current for this charging must go through the resistance of the lines and the generator and so represents a loss. This charging current also results in a small radiation loss. Etc., etc., etc. for all other losses that aren’t a result of the user taking power from the system.
The easiest way to collect for this cost of merely energising the line is to just put it into overhead which adds an increment to the charge per killowatt-hour.
I suspect this is usually how utilities handle this. Note that there always will be a fixed cost maintaining the wire from the poles to your home. Could be significant if it was a little used summer cottage or such.
don’t give them any ideas
Nothing significant to add but over the summer I worked for an electric utility company and I noticed that while a home uses those analog meters on the side of your house, big buildings like say hotels use digital ones I guess because there can be more rooom for error and they want that money honey.