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UTILITY WEEK | 17TH - 23RD JULY 2015 | 31 Community Editor, Utility Week, and content director, Utilities: 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; Assistant editor (insights): 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 Alan Simpson @AlanSimpson01 Shabby report by Comp & Mkts Auth on UK energy mkt. The German public has >1200 suppliers to choose from. Where is UK right to local supply? David Powell @powellds Reflections on the week. 1. Impossible to see Osbo's Budget swoop on renewables as anything other than deliberate attempt to slow investment Waterwise @Waterwise Hurrah for @Selfridges for ditching plastic bottled #water sales! - good for the environ- ment & peoples' pockets too :-) Ed Miliband @Ed_Miliband Can someone explain justification for applying the climate change levy to renewables? Seems like yet another blow to the industry. William Marchant @richonlyinname "Minister, we need more headroom for the LCF." "How much more?" "Well, if you can imagine a giraffe wearing stilts." Tony Bosworth @tonybosworth More roads, more oil and gas, more fracking. Yup, that's going to tackle climate change. #budget2015 OBSESSEDwCALIFORNIA @OWCalifornia Take it easy on the illegal fireworks tonight folks. California doesn't have enough water to put out fires. HaveIGotNewsForYou @haveigotnews After hearing he's accused of stealing water for his garden during California drought, Fox News denounce Tom Selleck as an illegal irrigant. Utilita Energy @UtilitaEnergy Happy Birthday Nikola Tesla. The genius scientist came up with the idea for a type of #smartphone as early as 1901... #FridayFact Top Tweets Disconnector You're grounded! The best laid schemes of mice and men, eh? It doesn't matter how long you prepare, you can never cover all the bases. Just ask the team behind Solar Impulse 2, the electric aircra attempting to circumnavigate the globe. There was elation when the cra safely completed its five-day flight from Japan to Hawaii (a world record for a solo flight), but then engineers discovered that its batteries had sustained irreparable damage and need replacement parts. It could take weeks to effect repairs, and that means it will miss its weather window for flying across the Atlantic. Solar Impulse 2 has a wing- span greater than a jumbo jet but weighs no more than an average family car, so it doesn't handle bad weather very well – assuming it could handle it at all. Unless the necessary spare parts arrive soon, the two-man pilot team and 80 technicians will have to wait until spring next year before the weather is clear enough to attempt a crossing. On the plus side, Disconnec- tor can think of worse places in the world to be stuck for eight months than Hawaii. Putting the French to flight One electric flying record that did fall last week was the first Disconnector electric-powered flight across the Channel, though not, as everyone had assumed, by Airbus Group. Airbus's sleek and shiny prototype cra, the E-Fan 2.0, has been wowing airshows with its manoeuvrability and near-silent running, not to men- tion its looks, for a while now. With two large rear-mounted, tube-encased propellers, it looks exactly like the sort of cra you want in the history books as the first to make it across the Channel. As it happens, the Airbus team were pushed to the wire by Slovenian upstarts Pipistrel in their Alpha Electro propel- ler plane, but they had to call off their attempt abruptly when motor engine supplier Siemens prohibited the use of its technol- ogy in a "flight above water". Siemens denied that its move had anything to do with Airbus making its attempt a few days later, but the Slovenes were le perplexed, vexed and muttering darkly about conspiracies. As it turned out, the sighs of relief at Airbus were shortlived. The evening before the E-Fan was due to make its attempt from Kent, French stunt pilot Hugues Duval flew an electric one-seater aircra called a Cri-Cri in the opposite direction from Calais to Dover. And back. Designed in the 1970s, the tiny Cri-Cri looks more like the sort of plane you'd see anchored to a fairground ride than actually in the sky. Hours later, the E-Fan suc- cessfully completed its flight too, but only time will tell how big an entry in the history books it will get as the second electric cra to make the journey. "We applaud the intrepid aviator Hugues Duval for his flight in his Cri-Cri," said an Airbus spokeswoman. Through gritted teeth. Your call, officer What is the etiquette for charg- ing your phone? Do you have to ask your host or just plug in wherever you can find a socket? Most of us feel free to plug in our phones at the office without asking our employer's permission. It's like taking pens – technically the, but who cares? Well, London Underground cares, as 45-year-old Robin Lee found out to his cost when he plugged his iPhone into an electric socket he discov- ered on a train travelling to Camden. A community support officer found him and nicked him on the grounds that he was "abstracting electricity". An incredulous Mr Lee thought the whole thing a farce. And said so. By this time four regular bobbies had joined the scene and he was promptly arrested a second time for "unacceptable behaviour" and "becoming aggressive". He was later released without charge. Arf. Arf.