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UTILITY Week 2nd October 2015

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Scottish Power bid a dramatic farewell to its Cockenzie coal-fired power plant in Fife last weekend. At 12 noon on Saturday 26 September, the big six generator used more than 160kg of nitroglycerine-based explosives to bring down the station's 149m-high twin chimneys and the turbine hall structure immediately afterwards. The completion of this stage of the demolition project leaves the boiler house as the last remaining major structure from the power station. The boiler house will be demolished later this winter, Scottish Power said. UTILITY WEEK | 2ND - 8TH OCTOBER 2015 | 5 "I'm using my 30p to buy candles – that's my energy policy" Former SSE chief executive Ian Marchant has blasted the government's decision to cut the Renewables Obligation, saying the 30p per year to be saved on his energy bill would go towards an unconventional means of keeping the lights on. 187,000 Southern Water has been labelled "negligent" and ordered to pay £187,000 in fines and costs by a judge in relation to a major pollution incident at its East Worthing treatment works. Nandy: energy will stay private Labour will not seek to renational- ise the energy sector, the shadow energy minister said at the party's conference on Tuesday morning. The Labour party's new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, controversially told the press in the run-up to the leadership contest that his personal wish was for an energy industry under state control. But Lisa Nandy said no such move was on the cards. "Jeremy and I don't want to nationalise energy. We want to do something much more radical. We want to democratise it," Nandy told the Brighton conference. The dramatic row-back on Corbyn's previous comments underlines the party's intention to focus the energy agenda on community-based energy schemes and collective switching. Nandy also vowed to back home- grown clean energy developers. See Lobby on the Labour party conference, p15 ENERGY £25m United Utilities is facing a higher than expected bill as a result of the cryptosporidium parasite contamination. More p26 ➟ Ecotricity is the only independent supplier to make it into the top five energy suppliers for customer ser- vice in Citizens Advice's latest quarterly complaints league. Six of the bottom eight are independents. Big six suppliers took four of the top five spots in the table, led by SSE with 47 complaints per 100,000 customers. Ecotricity split the top five on 70.2. This is the first time the league has included independ- ents, having expanded to the top 18 suppliers from just six previously. The data is gathered from customer interactions with the Consumer Advice Ser- vice, Citizens Advice and the Energy Ombudsman. Independents among worst for customer service Ratio of complaints per 100,000 customers, April - June 2015 1. SSE 2. EDF Energy 3. Ecotricity 4. British Gas 5. Eon 6. Good Energy 7. Green Star Energy 8. Utilita 9. Utility Warehouse 10. Ovo Energy 11. Economy Energy 12. Flow Energy 13. First Utility 14. Spark Energy 15. Npower 16. Co-Operative Energy 17. Extra Energy 18. Scottish Power 47.7 64.3 70.2 82.8 88.8 91.2 97.4 116.0 118.6 122.5 141.3 169.7 420.6 518.2 577.1 645.1 769.5 944.3

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