Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | JANUARY 2022 | 11 Electricity says there are already specific requirements in the RIIO-ED2 price control around climate change resilience, and network operators have already carefully considered the impact of future weather on the system. "As part of industry's response to DEFRA's [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs'] call for climate change adap- tation reporting, in conjunction with the Met Office and using the latest data available, we undertook a study of the likely impacts of cli- mate change and how that would impact on the management and operation of gas and electricity assets and networks," a spokes- person for the ENA says. "This confirmed our thinking on the pri- ority hazards and allowed us to understand the likely impacts as the planet warms. "The information from the Met Office report allowed DNOs to feed into their ED2 submissions." Network operators were also tasked with undertaking a survey of network vulnerabili- ties aŠer the 2013 storms, and yet despite both studies, the ENA indicated to the BEIS [Department of Business, Energy & Indus- trial Strategy] Select Committee that the scale of the damage was down in part to the unusual northerly direction of the wind. Such an explanation was given short shriŠ by the select committee chair Darren Jones MP. "It does seem to me that we ought to be prepared for wind coming in multiple directions," he says. He added that the £730 million that DNOs have spent on resilience over the past five years "doesn't sound like a lot of investment from my perspective". Nolan believes that DNOs may well respond to calls that they must improve by saying they will need to invest more and be allowed to do that by Ofgem. Former senior partner for networks at Ofgem Maxine Frerk says the clear steer the government has given over what standard is expected is actually helpful, as it will allow networks to start asking questions about how they will achieve that and what kind of investment it will require. Call times One area which was highlighted in Ofgem's review of DNO performance aŠer the stormy winter of 2013 as needing improvement was communication, and this appears to have broadly improved, says Nolan. "Communication this time seems to have been not good. I thought that had broadly been improved since then and DNOs have generally done well, so I'm surprised that communication was poor this time," he says. Photo: Northern Powergrid Photo: WPD Photo: SSEN Photo: ENW continued overleaf The Met Office issued a rare 'red weather warning' as Storm Arwen approached. It proved justified: the storm left 112,000 homes without power in the north of England (mostly in Northumber- land, County Durham and Tyne & Wear); 80,000 were without power in Scotland (Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and the Moray Coast); and 13,000 homes in Wales.

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