Solar power and eggs

We just got another electricity bill and so I would like to talk about solar panels again. When we moved here 15 years ago, we had a solar hot water system installed. We had already been using a solar system to heat water in our previous home and knew the benefits. Just over a year ago, we had the smallest solar panel system installed here on our roof. Here is the post from that time. I want to encourage you to look at the small units, 1.6 Kw, especially if you're single or it's just the two of you.  If you're prudent with your electricity usuage, you'll get by with the small unit. We've just received our third bill with the panels, and we're $122 in credit. We have not paid for electricity since we had the panels installed.

Here you can see the solar panels as well as the solar hot water system on the left.

 This part of the system is installed in our garage and on here we can see how much electricity is being generated.

There are a few things you can do to help save with the panels. It's mainly the usual things like turning off appliances at the wall,  cutting down on the hot water if you have an electrical hot water system and being careful with heating now that winter is here. In our contract with the electricity company, we buy electricity for 19 cents per kilowatt hour and we sell the excess from our panels for 44 cents per kilowatt hour. So we try to use power-hungry appliances, like the washing machine and vacuum cleaner, at night so they run on the energy we buy from the grid for 19 cents per kilowatt hour. That leaves us clear to sell the electricity the panels generate when the sun is shining for 44 cents per kilowatt hour. Our clothes washing is the main thing we modified - instead of doing a wash in the morning as I used to do, we now put on a wash at night, and hang it on the line in the morning. It's not much of a change but it helps us save.

I was talking to a woman the other day and she mentioned that she didn't have solar panels installed when they were heavily subsidised by the government because she could only afford a small unit and she didn't think it would make any difference. It has been our experience that even the smallest unit will make a difference and if you manage it well, you might not have to pay to electricity again. Hot water generally uses about 30 percent of the average household electricity. If you have the option to buy a solar hot water system that has a government subsidy, take it, because that will reduce your electricity bill by about 30 percent. After that, if you have the opportunity to buy the panels, and there is a subsidy, go for it. We paid our panels off on an interest-free loan and that worked really well for us. The details of that are in the post linked above.

Here is some information about electricity costs in Australia - these are Victorian costs but the other states would be similar.
This is information about solar hot water system government rebates.

USING EGGS

Now our chooks are laying again, we have an over-abundance of eggs, including Fiona's beautiful pale blue eggs. A great way of using eggs is to make custard. This one is a baked egg custard and it uses four eggs, but you could easily double it.

The dark brown egg above is a Barnevelder egg and the blue eggs are from our Araucana, Fiona.

BAKED EGG CUSTARD

Break four whole eggs into a mixing bowl or jug, add ½ cup cream, 1 cup of milk, a splash of good vanilla extract and two tablespoons of sugar. Mix everything well so the egg whites are broken up and everything is well combined.

Pour into an oven-proof dish, sprinkle with nutmeg. Place the oven-proof dish in a water bath/bain marie so the boiling water comes up to cover the bottom half of the over-proof dish, and bake at 170C/340F for about 30 minutes. Make sure the water is boiling. You need this gentle method of heating, not straight oven baking, for this recipe. The custard will be done when it's still slightly wobbly in the centre. This is delicious served warm or cold with stewed or fresh fruit. It is also a great filling for a sweet pie - either with a fruit base and topped with the custard or all custard and served with fruit on the side.

This is a very easy recipe, even for first time cooks. The only thing you have to be careful of is to not over cook it. If you don't eat all of it when it's freshly made,  it will keep in the fridge for two days.