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UTILITY WEEK | 6TH - 12TH NOVEMBER 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 insights 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: Richard Powell, t: 01342 332062, e: richard.powell@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 Top Tweets We are detective Life's complicated, thinks Disconnector. The era of smart data and the Internet of Things promises to revolutionise our lives in ways it's difficult to conceive of now. For energy companies, it's a fraught ques- tion: will utilities be riding the tidal wave or drowned by it? But revolutions can take unexpected turns. This, aer all, is the week in which the government is publishing pro- posals to allow security forces to view the internet browsing history of anyone they suspect of a crime. In a country where local councils can employ terror legislation to monitor whether citizens are compart- mentalising their recycling properly, mission creep is a genuine fear. Once such a surveillance carte blanche is established, how long will it be before data from smart energy meters are fed into the system? Maybe water meters to follow? Want to know how many people lived at a certain address, for how long, at what times? It could be a great surveillance tool in the right hands – and in the wrong hands, too. It would be ironic if the accusation against a smart meter that it was a "spy in the hall" actually became one of its functions. For the birds The great man longs for simpler times when we didn't rely on technology: nature could pro- vide all the answers we needed, as long as you heeded the knowledge passed down from generation to generation. Take birds, for instance. A wise man can learn a lot by observing their behaviour. According to ancient lore, the arrival on these shores of the Bewick's swan is a sure-fire way of telling how long the winter will last. The earlier it arrives from Siberia, the longer winter will be. According to the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust's Slimbridge Wetland Centre, a Bewick's swan touched down in the second week of October – the earliest time of the year the harbinger had arrived since the centre started keeping records 50 years ago. The headlines it generated pretty much wrote themselves: "UK facing longest winter for 50 years". As it turned out, 1 November saw many of us walking around in T-shirts, while some parts of the country clocked up a stag- gering 22°C, making it the hot- test November day on record. Stupid swans. Not so clever While the Bewick's swan might have jumped the gun on its winter migration, it did rather better than the short-eared owl that found itself 100 miles out to sea and flying in completely the wrong direction. The only reason we know about its adventure is that the exhausted bird chanced upon a North Sea oil rig, where it collapsed on the deck and was cared for by the riggers until it could hitch a ride in the next helicopter going back to the mainland. Disconnector DNA Energy @dna_energy Interesting to see post #Hinkley agreement that @edfenergy is promoting its electricity as low-carbon #nuclear electricity on its TV ads Steve Mitnick @ElectricValues #coal use by power plants fell 9% in August (v last Aug). Wow! Though electric sales rose 3%. Fight v #climatechange Caroline Lucas @CarolineLucas In April last year the government promised 1GW of solar on its estate. Number of panels installed so far? 0 Leonie Greene @LeonieGreene Hard to tally Lord Bourne speech on the global climate deal & future prosperity with our current fight for #solar Doug Parr @doug_parr Cuts to #renewables support mean cost- effective improvements to existing #wind sites economically unviable Emma Pinchbeck @ELPinchbeck Batteries will be game changer for distributed energy – including using your car to store energy for/from your home. William Marchant @richonlyinname Trying to get my head around CfDs for an interconnector. So it can't flow both ways? & that isn't discriminatory against other ICs, because? Mike@JBP_Energy @MikeJBP_Energy #GreenDeal PR & finance package was a huge failure but GreenDeal as a concept was a success. Was sold as finance package rather than benefit Water UK @WaterUK Never fully submerge a water outlet, as this can cause dirty water to be siphoned back into your drinking water. #WaterTips Good Energy @GoodEnergy Lord Davies wants FTSE 350 to have 33% female board members by 2020. We're already way past that target with 3 women on our 5-strong board! It's a tough job… Utility Week publisher Faversham House fielded a crack team of athletes for Tough Sh!t, the 10km obsta- cle run organised by WaterAid. Amazingly, they all finished the course and none of them broke limbs or drowned in mud. Better yet, they have raised £2,996.22 for WaterAid so far. Late contri- butions are welcome at: www.justgiving.com/utility-week