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Interview W hen energy secretary Ed Davey had the network bosses up after the Christmas storms, he joked that they were "the real big six". It got Steve Johnson worried for a moment. "I asked him to find another name for us," smiles the chief executive of Electricity North West (ENW). But Davey isn't the only one to draw analogies between distribution network operators (DNOs) and their cousins in supply. And following the December storms, the six DNOs have come in for their own share of political flak. It was a tough Christmas. Johnson had to refuse a plea for help from his opposite numbers down south when the first storms struck on 23 December, because he had a Met Office forecast warning him the extreme weather was headed his way. Sure enough, the storms struck the north on 27 December, with winds raging so hard that ENW couldn't send out staff for six or seven hours. In the media and political fallout that followed, many seem to have forgotten that there were two major events, and that the northern networks couldn't help their peers like they did after St Jude two months before. In January, there's another type of storm to contend with. Utility Week meets Johnson in his spacious office in a Warrington business park the week after the sit-down with Davey, just days before the "network six" were due to face a select committee on how they handled the storms. Smiling and charming as ever, Johnson is never- theless steely in his defence of ENW's record, insisting that the business couldn't have done better, and proudly quoting statistics, including that just 11 customers were off power for more than 48 hours. You can understand Johnson's pride in Electricity North West. He joined the business five years ago – or rather, he rejoined, as he cut his teeth at its predecessor Norweb as a trainee engineer. When he took over as chief executive in 2008, the business had just 100 staff, with all its maintenance and construction work contracted out to United Utilities. Johnson brought this back inhouse in 2010, creating a business that today has 1,300 staff and an operating profit of £225 million in 2012/13, up from £189 million the previous year. While ENW is one of the smaller DNOs, holding just one licence, it punches above its weight in industry profile and leadership, with Johnson currently chair of the Energy Networks Association and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) Smart Grid forum. The business has a strong track record, and is recognised for innovation, having won support from the Low Carbon Networks Fund in all three funding rounds. Customers are enjoying the fruits of this – the network already has considerable self-healing capacity, with 4,000 customers restored to power within three minutes during the storm without any human intervention. Such innovation has also led to £100 million of efficiency savUTILITY WEEK | 24th - 30th January 2014 | 9