Well, now I feel like an idiot. That comment was based on a poorly recalled statement regarding the ineffectiveness of Earth Hour. If you don't use electricity, it'll flow to the next guy, so your lack of use doesn't really have any effect. Still, you need to generate enough electricity to cover everyone's potential needs. Whether that electricity is used or not (where not means that unused electricity dissipates as heat or.. whatever happens to unused electicity?), it still needs to be available, and at a cost. Unused bandwidth doesn't need to be generated. It's simply a quiet line.
Thanks for reintroducing logic to my brain. The rest of my argument mostly holds up though, right?
Re-orient your thinking a little and it will make sense. We're talking AC systems (not a SWER) so it is a closed-loop as far as the electricity is concerned. The electricity doesn't go anywhere, it constantly oscillates. What you are actually generating in a meta sense is ability to do work. You are overcoming the electrical resistance from all those users' machines doing work.
I understand the closed loop. I did a bit of research when I wrote my last comment and when I read that line is when I realized how dumb I was.
So.. electricity gets pumped into the grid from some power station, and then [a given unit of electricity] loops repeatedly around the loop until it's either consumed by an appliance or is converted to heat by the resistance inherent to the transmission lines themselves?
Thanks for reintroducing logic to my brain. The rest of my argument mostly holds up though, right?