Utility Week

Utility Week 17th May 2019

Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government

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Community Disconnector is not con- vinced that Liquid Death will be coming to a festival in the UK any time soon. Cutting edge technology If Cessario and his chums are hoping to use death as a humorous marketing gimmick for sober American punks, the CIA is always on the lookout for ingenious ways of killing people for real. Disconnector was struck by the sheer barbarity of the newly revealed "Ninja missile", which is more prosaically des- ignated the R9X. It is a missile armed with whirring knives rather than explosives. The idea is to drop it from drones in targeted assassinations. A spokesman for the agency told The Wall Street Journal that the thinking behind the weapon was to minimise col- lateral damage. The Ninja can be dropped on a car and the blades will slice through the roof and the occupant. Presum- ably any passengers will just have to take one for the team. The great man would love to have been a † y on the wall when they brainstormed that one. "It's like a missile – but with knives!" Doubtless at a later meeting of the PR team someone suggested use of the Ninja could be justiŠ ed with: "Heck, at least it's not a bomb." Disconnector Publishing director, Utilities: Ellen Bennett, t: 01342 332084, e: ellenbennett@fav-house.com; Content director: Jane Gray, janegray@fav-house.com, t: 01342 333004; Acting editor: Suzanne Heneghan, t: 01342 332106, e: suzanneheneghan@fav-house.com Intelligence editor: Denise Chevin, 01342 332087, denisechevin@fav-house.com; News editor: Katey Pigden, t: 01342 332082, e: kateypigden@fav-house.com; Energy correspondent: Tom Grimwood, t: 01342 332061, e: tomgrimwood@fav-house.com; Policy correspondent: David Blackman, e: davidblackman@fav-house.com; Reporter: Adam John, t: 01342 332069, e: adamjohn@fav-house.com; Editorial assistant: Greg Jones, t: 01342 332102, e: gregjones@fav-house.com; Production editor: Paul Newton, t: 01342 332085, e: paulnewton@fav-house. com; Business development manager: Ben Hammond, e: benhammond@fav-house.com. t: 01342 332116; Business development executive: Sarah Wood, e: sarahwood@fav-house.com. t: 01342 332117 Conference sponsorship manager: Sophie Abbott, t: 01342 332062, e: sophieabbott@fav-house.com; General enquiries: 01342 332000; Membership enquiries: Peter Bissell, t: 01342 332057, e: peterbissell@fav-house.com. 2,500 Average circulation Jan–Dec 2018 Membership subscriptions: UK £769+VAT per year. Overseas £781 per year. Contact Peter Bissell on: 01342 332057 Utility Week is a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the regulator of the UK's magazine and newspaper industry. We abide by the Editors' Code of Practice and are committed to upholding the highest standards of journalism. If you think we have not met those standards and want to make a complaint, please contact the Editor. If we are unable to resolve your complaint, or if you want more information about IPSO or the Editors' Code, contact IPSO on 0300 123 2220 or visit www.ipso.co.uk. National Grid ESO@ng_eso Whilst it's a shame this run has come to an end, at 193 hours and 25 minutes it's a signi cant increase in #zerocoal generation and is over double our second longest run, of 90 hours, set only a couple of weeks ago. Frances Buckingham@FBuckingham "Net zero means the whole econ- omy – no ifs, no buts, no special pleading" #netzero #zerocarbon @_richardblack @ECIU_UK Samuel Stevenson@SamuelS47174645 Fantastic news – only 8 per cent of UK electorate that opposes eliminating the nation's #carbon emissions by 2050 – compared with 59 per cent in favour. Duncan Carter@Duncan_E_Carter Crossrail late and over budget partly because "its management team clung to an unrealistic open- ing date". Any parallels with the smart meter programme? Richard Howard@UKenergywonk Wowsers – I just heard that Spanish wholesale prices hit €11,498.85/MWh during the rst half of Liverpool-Barcelona game on Tuesday. The regulator is inves- tigating (the prices not the game). Tom Steward@Steward_T Fantastic! @Ofgem con rms at network access challenge group that carbon impact (both of elec- tricity mix, and wider energy mix – including tran sport, heat etc) will be included in future of network charging modelling – essential to understanding impact of change. #decarbonisation Top Tweets are bad. Proponents of nuclear fusion already have a hard time getting heard without having to sell the theory to the great unwashed on the basis that you've done the maths using mayonnaise. Death, it's the real thing! Any technological innovation has as much to do with market- ing as science. And if there's one guy who knows about market- ing it's Mike Cessario, a former Net† ix marketing director who counts House of Cards and Stran- ger Things among his credits. Cessario has just success- fully raised $1.6 million in seed funding from the likes of Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and renowned Silicon Valley invest- ment company Science Inc for his start-up. And what are these canny investors backing, you ask? Liquid Death. Yup. Cessario is chief execu- tive and co-founder of a com- pany called Liquid Death, which wants to sell a refreshing canned drink of the same name. And what will that drink be? Water. He was apparently inspired by a youth scene in the US called "straight-edged punk", whose advocates eschew drugs and alcohol but "otherwise live a punk lifestyle". It's a way to market canned mountain water to young folk who aren't into the "whole foods and yoga". Do you want mayo with that? It is through science that man pushes the frontiers of human knowledge, and most would agree this is a noble endeavour. But in these dystopian times sometimes scientists don't do themselves any favours in Š ght- ing back against the climate denial mindset which main- tains that science is a matter of opinion rather than fact. Take Arindam Banerjee, for instance, an associate profes- sor of mechanical engineer- ing and mechanics at Lehigh University in the US. He studies the dynamics of materials in extreme environments – speciŠ cally the forces at play in "inertial conŠ nement" cham- bers in nuclear fusion reactors. These chambers can explode, so it is essential to understand what happens to metal at very high temperature. Banerjee and his team dis- covered that the material that best replicates the behaviour of metal at high temperatures is mayonnaise at low tempera- tures. They've thus been able to publish the results of a series of experiments designed to get a better understanding of the fundamental hydrodynamics and physics of fusion reactions – but with mayonnaise. The science is solid, but, thinks Disconnector, the optics UTILITY WEEK | 17TH - 23RD MAY 2019 | 31

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