Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
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UTILITY WEEK | 22ND - 28TH 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 3WhitehallPlace @3WhitehallPlace We are now consulting on proposals to replace outdoor wind turbines with shale gas fracking rigs. Please respond by 31 June. Emma Lucy Pinchbeck @ELPinchbeck I really hope the three shale gas experts @DECCgovuk is recruiting take another look at the horribly over-optimistic gov benefits case. James Forsyth @JGForsyth So George Osborne's former PPSs are now, respectively, chief secretary, business secretary, energy secretary and deputy Tory party chairman. Anne Begg @annebegg Can I just point out before myth becomes fact – Irn Bru has been on sale in the Commons for years! guynewey @guynewey Just had email from CMA suggesting we had provided too much information. This is a first. jessica lennard @JessicaLennard Gd presentation from @contagious today. Key take away: innovation's great but customer experience is king. Don't let one kill the other. Adam Scorer @adam_scorer Tech reasons aside – billing engines, data migrations – energy firms simply have not protected customer service during big efficiency drives. William Marchant @richonlyinname Can't believe they've given minister for Portsmouth gig to someone who isn't an energy minister. An unacceptable abandon- ment of tradition. mark haddon @mark_haddon Global warming is like the obesity epidemic. Let's stop blaming individuals and start blam- ing the companies whose profits depend on it. David Hendy @divadiow @wessexwater I stopped using wet wipes because I don't want a Bristol fatberg! Top Tweets Disconnector 'Press 1 for the angry robot' The more luxurious and cos- setted our lives become, the ruder and more selfish we are, it seems. And being pampered by technology is no help – quite the reverse, in fact. Disconnector muses thus on learning that New Zealand company Touchpoint Group has built the "world's angriest robot" to help call centre staff deal with stroppy customers. It is easy to frustrate customers with bewil- dering levels of automation, and when they are put through to an operator they are oen fuming. The rage bot's programming predicts how humans react when passed around such sys- tems, and gives the call handler an appropriate earful. It's difficult to measure who comes out worst from this story, the companies that install cus- tomer care systems guaranteed to enrage their customers to the degree that they need to train their staff in anger management, or the customers who are so easily piqued that call centre operators have to acclimatise to their new working environment by sitting at their workstation while a robot swears at them. I'm all right, Jack The more we have, the less we're prepared to give up, even for the common good. Or perhaps espe- cially for the common good. Readers will probably be aware that California is enduring Disconnector a record-breaking drought, now in its fourth year. Aerial photos show parched golf courses where putting greens are sur- rounded by brown desert fair- ways, and satellite data shows that the richest US state has only a year's-worth of water in its reservoirs. Groundwater too is depleted. California governor Jerry Brown has ordered the first mandatory limits on water use in the state, but they apply only to urban areas. The agricultural sector and industry are largely exempt. There are, for instance, more than 100 water-bottling plants in California run by big concerns such as Nestle, Walmart and Coca-Cola. It seems nuts to suck water from the ground and ship it all over the country when the locality it's drawn from is parched. But such are Califor- nia's archaic water rights laws that the federal authorities are powerless to stop them. Not every citizen is pulling their weight. Celebrity luminar- ies such as Barbara Streisand, Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez have been named and shamed in the press with aerial photos of their emerald green lawns and verdant orchards. There are hey fines for people in urban areas who use too much water, but what might seem like a prohibitive fine to the average Joe might be a reasonable price for a manicured lawn to the man or woman who has everything – and wants to keep it that way. Stick it to them We Brits wouldn't stand for that nonsense, of course – try being the only house in the street with a bowling green lawn while there's a hosepipe ban. But there are limits to what we're prepared to put up with. Windfarms spoiling our view, for instance. Of course, we don't say that we're bothered about the view from our cottage gardens. No, what we're concerned about are the sub-audible oscillations that give people headaches, the decimation of bird and bat colonies, and the nausea- inducing strobe effects. Spanish start-up Vortex has developed wind poles, giant sticks akin to wind turbines but without the blades. They take advantage of a phenom- enon that causes tall structures to shake violently – the same thing that architects have to stop tall buildings from doing. Add some magnets and an alternator, and hey presto! An oscillating stick. The company says the Bladeless (for that is what it's called) generates 30 per cent less energy than a traditional turbine, but is cheaper to make, install and maintain. It occurs to Disconnector that if we end up with half the country covered in fields of black solar panels or oscillat- ing white sticks, we may look back wistfully to a time when a gracefully rotating wind turbine was considered an eyesore.