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utILItY WeeK | 6th - 12th June 2014 | 31 Community Disconnector Editor: Ellen Bennett, t: 01342 332084, e: ellen.bennett@fav-house.com; News editor: Jillian Ambrose, t: 01342 332061, e: jillian.ambrose@fav-house.com; Energy editor: Megan Darby, t: 01342 332087, e: megan.darby@fav-house.com; Associate news editor: Mathew Beech, t: 01342 332082, e: mathew.beech@fav-house. com; Reporter: Conor McGlone, t: 01342 332083, e: conor.mcglone@fav-house.com; Business development manager: Ed Roberts, t: 01342 332067, e: ed.roberts@fav-house. com; Sales executive: Hayley Cronin, t: 01342 332077, e: hayley.cronin@fav-house.com; Publisher: Amanda Barnes, e: amanda.barnes@fav-house.com. General enquiries: 01342 332000; Subscriptions: UK £577 per year, Overseas £689 per year, t: 01342 332011.ISSN: 1356-5532. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Printed by: Buxton Press, Palace Road, Buxton, Derbyshire SK17 6AE. Published by: Faversham house Ltd, Windsor Court, Wood Street, east Grinstead, West Sussex Rh19 1uZ World cups In the run-up to the World Cup, National Grid has circulated a Top 10 of the televised football matches in England and Wales in terms of the power surges they caused as the nation reached for a celebratory/com- pensatory cuppa aer the match. Topping the league is England's World Cup semi- final against West Germany in 1990 (we lost on penalties). The "pickup" was 2,800MW, which Disconnector is reliably informed would power 1.12 mil- lion electric kettles. Eight of the matches feature England in a World Cup fixture. Manchester United is the only club side to make the list (Cham- pions League semi-final against Juventus in 1999), when we reached for 725,000 kettles. Disconnector can't help but observe that the top of the table, at least in terms of demand for tea, was a game played in 1990, while at the bottom was a World Cup game played in 2006 (Eng- land vs Ecuador. A laboured 1-0 victory). For this one, the nation demanded only 680,000 kettles. It seems the nation's appetite for a brew has waned in propor- tion to its appetite for failure. The pickup in demand for World Cup matches has steadily fallen despite the surging popularity of club football. Of course, depending on who you listen to, the UK's genera- tion supply margins are in such a parlous state that if we all reached for the kettle in the Disconnector same numbers as 1990, many of us would be le standing in our kitchens in darkness. The only crumb of comfort in this sorry tale is that maybe Eng- land's footballers are not really as bad as they seem to be: they're doing it on purpose to spare the blushes of National Grid. Fact. Graphic lesson In another exclusive, Discon- nector can reveal that scien- tists working in the US have discovered a direct correlation between the number of people who drown in swimming pools in America and the amount of electricity the country generates from nuclear sources. It's true! Between 1999 and 2009, peo- ple whose job it is to chart such things (chartists?) drew graphs of swimming pool deaths and nuclear electricity output – and they match. Disconnector would like to thank the work done by investigative website Spurious Correlations (www.tylervigen. com) in bringing this to the world's attention. Taking the heat Disconnector is not sure whether to be comforted or not, to learn that MI6's top secret London HQ has made great strides in energy efficiency over the past few years. In 2011, the Secret Secu- rity Service's vast complex in Vauxhall had an energy effi- ciency rating of 166, which is very low. So management (read "Q") commissioned a report, which among other things recommended that staff (James Bond) turn out the lights when leaving an office and use the lis less frequently. Today, the building has a very respectable energy efficiency score of 88, and the nation's spies are a little bit fitter for using the stairs more oen. All this came to light when reporters at the BBC found the building's official Energy Performance Certificate on the official non-domestic energy performance register on the internet. All public buildings are required to have such a certificate and publish it on the register, except those belong- ing to the army, the royal family and, er, the security services. Aer the BBC published its story praising energy- efficient spooks, all information relating to the building promptly disappeared from the register. Anyone would think MI6 had something to hide. 3,580 Average circulation Jan–Dec 2013 Subscriptions: UK £577 per year, Overseas £689 per year fhcustomerservices@ abacusemedia.com WhitehallPlace @3WhitehallPlace Today Ed is visiting British Gas, which has installed the world's first turbine powered by a revolving door Richard Hall @richonlyinname EdF response the most thoughtful & well argued of the industry responses. It reads like written by a function of govt, which it kind of is Enrico Crobu @EnricoCrobu "The use of standby on some electrical goods is responsible for about [...] 6% of domestic electricity consumption" (Decc 2011) Seb Berry @SebPV 2 weeks on still trying to understand how an overarching Decc policy goal of delivering 2020 cost-effectively, then stops large-scale #solar Tim Probert @TimProbert The Lib Dems are worse than football supporters. Clegg out! Sack the board! But not even Tony Pulis is going to save them from relegation Megan Darby @UW_Megan You'll never guess who the smart meter rollout people have got to launch their campaign... *drum roll* ... Bob Geldof! EUA @energyutilities With "green gas" back on the agenda it does seem that what goes around, comes around Emily Gosden @emilygosden Deutsche Bank on "rudderless" Centrica: "Will the last one to leave turn off the gas." Says it must stop trying to be "poor man's BG Group" Bryony Worthington @bryworthington US creeps towards comprehensive climate action plan. Level of cuts too low over too long a time period. Will need tightening. Just like EU Cornwall Energy @spectrumvoice Prof Catherine Waddams: Not #CMAreview job to look at whether people can afford energy; only on the state of competition Top Tweets