Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
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UTILITY WEEK | 8TH - 14TH MAY 2015 | 31 Community 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; Associate news editor: Mathew Beech, t: 01342 332082, e: mathew.beech@fav-house.com; Insights editor: Jane Gray, t: 01342 332087, e: jane.gray@fav-house.com; Research analyst: Vidhu Dutt, t: 01342 332026, e: vidhu. dutt@fav-house.com; Reporters: Lois Vallely, t: 01342 332080; e: lois.vallely@fav-house.com and Lucinda Dann, t: 01342 332083; e: lucinda.dann@fav-house.com; Business development manager: Ed Roberts, t: 01342 332067, e: ed.roberts@fav-house.com; Business development executive: Sarah Wood, t: 01342 332077, e: sarah.wood@fav-house.com; Publisher: Amanda Barnes, e: amanda.barnes@fav-house.com. General enquiries: 01342 332000; Membership subscriptions: UK £577 per year, overseas £689 per year, t: 020 8955 7045 or email membership sales manager Paul Tweedale: paultweedale@fav-house.com. 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 3,580 Average circulation Jan–Dec 2014 Membership subscriptions: UK £577 per year. Overseas £689 per year. Email: paultweedale@fav-house.com EUA @energyutilities All this energy spent on #Trident and #RussellBrand, what about spending some energy on energy? #energyhour #GE2015 Peter4SENWDHCN @PeterMannionMP People with low set, spring-loaded letter- boxes with thick brush draft-excluders will be first to be shot, come the revolution. #GE2015 StollmeyerAlice @StollmeyerEU "@GreenpeaceEU welcomes #PowerProbe investigation into what are often thinly- disguised subsidies for #fossilfuel power plants." #EnergyUnion Jessica Lennard @JessicaLennard Apparently new E.ON company name, Uniper, is a combo of 'unique' & 'performance'. Well, now we know. Dan Byles @danielbyles @JessicaLennard I look at it and my first reactions are 'juniper', 'sniper' and 'viper' EnergyBillRevolution @EnergyBillRev £3.20 boost in GDP per £1 invested by govern- ment on #insulation. End cold homes with #GE2015. Simon Evans @DrSimEvans While I was on holiday everyone got very excited about Tesla 'changing the face of the world as we know it'. Excuse me if I am underwhelmed. William Marchant @richonlyinname If Centrica doesn't exercise its option, I'm happy to bid £2 for global rights to British Gas name. Serious offer. Pound coins, no coppers. David Roberts @drvox Some day, the fact that we exploded moun- tains to get to coal – and debated whether it's harmful! – will baffle historians. Jeremy Gordon @jrmygrdn In this universe, things tend towards complexity and rarely simplicity. Adding smart meters and home storage to the grid is a case in point. Top Tweets Disconnector It's good to talk The nation has been waiting with bated breath for answers to the three urgent questions of our time. Two have been answered this week (Chelsea! And Char- lotte!). The third – who will run the country – will just start coming into focus as this issue of Utility Week hits subscribers' doormats. This general election seems to have been the longest cam- paign in living memory, and if the polls are proved right it will also prove to be the most incon- clusive. And we'll have to wait weeks while the various political parties try to form a coalition – or at least arrive at sufficient terms that one of them can run the country. That may not prove an easy matter. The alliance most com- mentators take for granted is some sort of Labour/SNP accord, but in the week leading up to polling day, Labour's Scottish supremo Jim Murphy can't walk the streets of the erstwhile friendly city of Glasgow without been jostled and barracked by mobs of very aggressive, and well organised, SNP supporters. There's nothing like spitting in someone's face before break- ing out the canapes and getting down to some negotiations. The outcome of those talks matters a lot to utilities, par- ticularly the energy industry. The SNP has strong opinions on renewables, Longannet and transmission charges (spe- cifically, how they should be Disconnector rigged in a way that benefits Scotland). Labour has made lowering energy prices a badge of honour, although how and who will pay for it is less clear. The sector could find it not only suffers political interference, but competing political interference – and from people who would like to see their partners fail. The heavy hand of politics does not lie happily on energy companies – or at least that seems to be the experience else- where in the world. In India, for instance, incompetence and cor- ruption have contrived to leave the country bedevilled by power cuts, even in the capital. In fact, addressing the coun- try's generation woes became a battle cry of Narendra Modi's election campaign last year. He and his BJP party were swept to power, the first parliamentary majority by a single party since 1984. You get what you pay for Meanwhile, only last week in Venezuela, the government was forced to shorten the working day for all government workers (and there are a lot of those in Venezuela) in an attempt to save electricity. A hot spell across the country has seen the use of air conditioners soar, and the capacity of the grid to cope to plummet. Venezuela has some of the lowest tariffs in the world, which guarantees demand will be strong, but no matching incen- tives to invest in infrastructure. So there hasn't been any. The result is predictable, and maybe something Ed Miliband should take heed of. Turn those lights off ! Of course, there is one way to buck the market and stick two fingers up at the supply and demand curves that tyrannise the western world: you can do what the North Koreans do and just leave everyone in darkness. Night-time maps of the con- tinent taken by satellite show Kim Jong-un's Neverland pitch black, surrounded by a sea of shimmering electric lights from the cities of South Korea, China, et al. Only the capital, Pyong- yang, seems to be kitted out with electric lights. Or at least, that's the only place allowed to turn them on at night. As a way of addressing the energy trilemma it has the vir- tue of being direct and easy to understand. And if the North Koreans are anything, they are unambiguous. The US released spy photos last week purporting to show a group of North Korean prison- ers being lined up for execu- tion in front of anti-aircra guns. A US military spokesman said that the effect would be to "pulverise" a human body. It may come as some crumb of comfort to Jim Murphy as he tours the streets of Glasgow that at least the only thing being fired at him is abuse.