Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 5TH - 11TH APRIL 2019 | 5 "Operating a zero-carbon electricity system in 2025 is a major stepping stone to full decarbonisation of the entire electricity system" Fintan Slye, electricity system operator director at National Grid, said National Grid would take the necessary actions to allow the power grid to run on entirely zero-carbon electricity by 2025. Natural England has given Southern Water an organisational licence, meaning the company will gain quicker approval for engineering projects that affect protected species such as dormice, badgers and crested newts. To get an organisational licence a business needs to show it has "consistently met the conditions of other types of wildlife licences in the past". ENERGY SSE still looking at retail options SSE has confirmed it still is working on "future options" for its retail arm, after merger plans with Innogy's Npower subsidiary collapsed last year. Ahead of its full results in May, the company said it was continuing to work on options for SSE Energy Services, which could include "potential external collateral arrangements". It said all options were being assessed "with the interests of customers, employees and shareholders" being given full consideration. It plans to report back on its preferred option by the end of May. According to SSE's latest finan- cial statement, it is expecting to deliver a dividend of 97.5 pence per share for 2018/19, with adjusted earnings per share in the range of 64-69 pence. ELECTRICITY Shortfall emerges in FIT subsidies Seventy-seven wind and solar projects, representing 21MW and 32MW of capacity respectively, were unable to secure subsidies under the feed-in tariff (FIT) scheme before its closure at the end of March, research by Regen has revealed. The analysis is based on the latest figures from Ofgem, which showed that several of the deploy- ment caps for the final quarter were reached early. The caps in question covered standalone solar projects, behind- the-meter solar projects of more than 50kW and wind projects of more than 100kW. Of the 77 projects that missed out on subsidies, at least 30 were community energy schemes, according to Community Energy England. With a combined capacity of almost 12MW, they would have added nearly 7 per cent to the total capacity of the sector. Emma Bridge, chief executive of Community Energy England, said the closure of the FIT had left community energy and small- scale renewables in limbo. WATER Devon's record fatberg removed Devon and Cornwall's largest-ever fatberg has been successfully removed, South West Water has announced. The 64m fatberg was discov- ered by the water company under the Esplanade in Sidmouth just before Christmas. South West Water said its workers have battled "exceptionally challenging conditions" over the past eight weeks to break up the congealed fat, oil and wet wipes. Initially, the workers had to be winched into the sewer via a manhole and for the first few days had to wear specialist breathing apparatus because of dangerous gases in the pipe. To break up the fatberg, the team used specialist jetting equip- ment and manual labour before it was loaded into tankers. "Without some sort of strategic intervention, EVs won't take off at the scale and pace they need to" Trevor Hutchings, Gemserv strategy and communications director, says the EV industry needs to come together to create common standards. 66% Proportion of British Water members who believe that nationalisation would reduce the standards of service in the industry. 111TWh Amount of electricity generated by renewables in 2018, which was 11.8 per cent higher than the year before and meant renewables accounted for a record 33.3 per cent of the UK's electricity.

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