I solved wind turbines.
You're welcome!
The problem with the electricity from wind turbines, and solar panels of course, is that it's useless. It's unreliable. It's available only when the weather permits it.
Imagine that you're a householder or an industrialist and someone offers to sell you electricity. Cheap electricity.
"Great!" you say - I'll need 2KW available 9-5 and I guess I can manage with 1KW the rest of the day.
"No." says the salesgit, "You don't understand." says the salesgit, "You can only use our electricity when we randomly produce it. Not whenever you want it."
"Oh!" says you. "No thanks" says you. "That's useless to me." says you. Because it's useless to you. It's useless to anyone. Unless they happen to be in the electricity storage business.
Which is why wind electricity - unreliable electricity - is worthless. Which is why no-one will buy it.
But the Government wants to sell it. They're desperate to sell it.
They need to sell it so that they can save the world from climate, and make all their land-owning friends rich in the process.
So the Government forces the national electricity grid to buy it anyway. Simple. Problem solved. Right?
Wrong.
Here's what happens now.
That useless, worthless electricity that the national grid now has to buy displaces valuable, reliable, dispatchable electricity from power stations.
So the power stations sell less of their electricity, so they have to put up their prices to cover their costs. So
your electricity prices go up.
Because you now have to pay for the reliable useful electricity that you still need
as
well as all that worthless unreliable electricity that the grid is paying full price for.
So you use less. The industrialists use less - they shutter their factories or move them abroad.
So the power stations sell less, so they start to cut back on their electricity production.
They cut down on maintenance, on fuel stocks, on future investments. They close down perfectly good power stations that have now become uneconomic.
Or immoral. Or racist.
So now, your electricity is more expensive
and it's less reliable. There are brownouts. Blackouts.
The more useless, worthless, unreliable electricity the Government forces the grid to buy the more expensive and less reliable your electricity inevitably becomes.
It's happening in Germany. It's happening in the UK. It's happening in California. It's happening in Australia. It's happening in Texas, of all places.
And there's no way of avoiding it. It's inescapable.
Because without storage, unreliable electricity is useless and worthless.
And battery storage is far,
far too expensive.
And hydrogen storage is too stupid and dangerous.
And pumped hydro is too difficult and long-term an investment
for Governments which have hungry land-owning friends who want their subsidies NOW.
But.
There is a simple solution. Because there's a perfectly good purchaser of unreliable electricity with plenty of storage right there. Already built into the system:
The power stations!
They have storage in the form of fossil fuels.
And they would happily buy unreliable electricity, stabilise it through their power stations,
and sell it to their existing customers if that meant they could save money on their fossil fuel usage and increase their profits.
If the wind farms
can produce electricity cheaper than power stations.
And if the wind farms
will sell their unreliable, cheap, electricity to power stations for less than the power stations would spend
on the fuels needed to produce that same electricity then the power stations will buy it.
They will buy it of their own free will. Because it will make them more money. And save their fossil fuels.
And save consumers money. And save the planet from the climate. Everyone wins!
But of course, it won't happen.
Because Governments are stupid and feckless and their land-owning friends are clever and greedy.
The wind farms don't
have to sell their electricity to power stations for less than the cost of reliable electricity,
because the Government has guaranteed them the price of reliable electricity. And so they won't. They'll keep on selling it to you for full price.
So better get used to unaffordable electricity and rolling blackouts. It's the new normal.
Have an
egg.
By Alain Passard
Chaud-Froid d'oeuf
Arpège Eggs
starter snack veg
About 35 years ago in 1986 a superstar chef called Alain Passard working at his Michelin-starred Paris Restaurant L'Arpège managed the impossible:
he invented a new way to boil an egg!
Variously known as the Arpège Egg, Chaud-Froid d’Oeuf (Hot-Cold Egg),
or Coquetier Maison de Cuisine (House Egg) at the Arpège itself.
The concept is a fusion of oppositions - the warm yolk and the cold cream, the sulfurous chives and the sugary syrup.
Of course Passard is also responsible for a Frankenstein monstrosity called Corps à Corps (Body-to-Body),
consisting of half a chicken inelegantly stitched to half a duck.
So he's not really all that.
Perhaps unsurpisingly, he is also now mostly a vegetarian.
Anyway, here is that egg.
Work fast to serve it immediately after assembly lest its essences miscegenate like an uncomfortable chiducken.
Serves 4
- 4 eggs
- pinches of ground black pepper
- 4 tbsp chives, chopped
- 150ml double cream
- splash sherry vinegar
- Quatre Epices - pinches of nutmeg, ginger, white pepper and cloves
- drizzles of maple syrup
Cut open the eggs with an egg topper, and discard the whites, restraining the unbroken yolk with your fingers, or a spoon, or whatever.
Keep the eggs in their carton while you work on them.
Season each yolk with a pinch of black pepper and sea salt, and three scoops of chives applied with a small melon baller.
Lower the eggs to float in simmering water, switch off the heat, and allow to cook for 3 mins.
Meanwhile season the cream with four pinches each of sea salt, pinches of nutmeg, ginger, white pepper and cloves.
Add a few dashes of sherry vinegar to taste, and whip the cream to very soft peaks.
Fill a piping bag with the mixture if you intend to pipe the cream.
Take the eggs from the water and carefully spoon or pipe the whipped cream on top to almost fill the egg shells.
Drizzle with maple syrup, sprinkle with chopped chives, and serve immediately in egg cups.
The egg looks beautiful I await you making it for me for breakfast with a glass of chateau obvs.
#1 – 8 May, 2023 at 11:12 pm
Thank you kind visitor.
Though I suspect you just want the egg cup :)
#2 – 24 May, 2023 at 11:24 am