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“Wait a minute! Hydroelectric generators? They’re big heavy things aren’t they?”
“No! Not now! Well they’re still big, but we’ve manged to get them down to roughly the size of a wooden chair, like the ones in school. Faraday wheeled one of the generators up to the brook, and I wheeled the other one. We ran the power line 50 metres back to the works, lowered the mill wheels into the stream, and bingo! Electricity!”
Questioning her own sanity, she continues, “OK … and what are … what are load balancers?”
Excited, NutJob’s speech becomes a little faster, and is delivered at a higher pitch.
“One generator was better than the other! We harnessed their output together, but the phases weren’t the same. The presses ran fast, then slow, then fast again. Too fast, and too slow. Faraday said the cycles were out of sync. Sometimes amplifying the current, and sometimes almost cancelling it out. We need to balance them. He knows what a load balancer is. He says there are massive ones in the Leven dam. If we want a smaller one we’re going to have to build it ourselves. From scratch. We just need to get our hands on the right components.”
—o—
By the time the cavalry returns from Ormskirk it’s mid afternoon on Saturday, and all CandiCrush wants to do is have a rest.
KristalClear is keen to get a full update on the news and is disappointed, though not surprised, to learn that nothing much happened.
CandiCrush changes the subject. Raising her right index finger in front of her, pointing at nothing in particular other than the sky, she uses her strictest head teacher voice and says, “no dangly things!”
“That’s what Mr Rafone says!” responds KristalClear.
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