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UTILITY WEEK | 12TH - 18TH FEBRUARY 2016 | 31 Community Editor, Utility Week, and content director, Utilities: Ellen Bennett, t: 01342 332084, e: ellen. bennett@fav-house.com; Assistant editor (insights): Jane Gray, t: 01342 332087, e: jane.gray@ fav-house.com; Associate insights editor: Mathew Beech, t: 01342 332082, e: mathew.beech@ fav-house.com; Research analyst: Vidhu Dutt, t: 01342 332026, e: vidhu.dutt@fav-house.com; Deputy news editor: Lois Vallely, t: 01342 332080; e: lois.vallely@fav-house.com; Networks correspondent: Lucinda Dann, t: 01342 332083, e: lucinda.dann@fav-house.com; Reporters: Saffron Johnson, t: 01342 332050, e: saffron.johnson@fav-house.com; Tom Grimwood, t: 01342 332061, e: tom.grimwood@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; 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 £637 per year. Overseas £749 per year. Top Tweets Musk makes you pay, pal If there's one modern hero who best epitomises our times, it's got to be Elon Musk, the oddly named US serial entrepreneur who co-founded PayPal. It's not just that he's a multi- billionaire, or that he's still young (okay, he's older than Mark Zuckerberg, but then most of us are). It's not even that he's a genius with technology who simultaneously runs a port- folio of really cool companies (SpaceX, Solar City and Tesla). Nope, what's really cool about Elon is that he does what the hell he wants and doesn't give a stuff what anybody thinks. Mr Musk hit the headlines at the end of last month aer he received a critical review of the launch event of the Model X, the latest Tesla electric car to be released. Venture capitalist Stewart Alsop had a $5,000 deposit reserving a Tesla so he was invited to the launch but he didn't enjoy it – it started late and was too crowded for Mr Alsop's liking, and he said so on his blog. Elon being Elon, and not a man who takes criticism lying down, promptly cancelled Alsop's order. That's one way of dealing with an unhappy customer. Just un-customer them. Imagine if the CEOs of energy and water utilities could respond to bad press in the same fashion. No sooner had some Daily Mail hack posted a story about a little old lady getting errone- ously billed ten grand for elec- tricity, than he'd find himself clacking away at his typewriter in darkness. Go to the kitchen to make yourself a cup of tea and find the tap bone dry? Serves you right for making all that fuss about a little bit of cryptosporidium, mate. It's a lovely thought, but those pesky regulators would only kick up a fuss. Until a fairer world prevails, utility bigwigs will just have to suffer the slings and arrows of outra- geous media and take vicarious pleasure from Elon Musk doing what we can't. Force of nature While we're on the subject of cars, Disconnector was reminded this week that it's not only in the UK that we're suf- fering unpredictable weather patterns. In the US, too, they're finding them hard to live with. Aer half the country being wiped out by a freak snow storm in January, residents of Wisconsin were caught off guard by unseasonably warm weather last week when a frozen lake used as a car park for an annual Winter Fest suddenly started cracking and dumped dozens of expensive vehicles into the icy waters. No-one was hurt but doubt- less some man-pride was lost. Being able to judge whether a lake is frozen enough to park your car on is a measure of masculinity in Wisconsin. If that lake had unexpect- edly thawed under one of Elon Musk's EVs, he'd have had the whole thing filled in the next day and covered in asphalt. That would teach nature who's boss. Bravo the Beeb While the energy industry waits with a certain amount of trepidation for the smart meter rollout to begin in earnest, Dis- connector was taken with the little-trumpeted success of the IT upgrade of the Economy 7 electricity meter system. Not many people will be aware that the signalling for Economy 7, a sort of precur- sor to the smart network, is beamed into people's homes courtesy of the BBC – in a radio frequency interlaced with Radio 4, to be precise. Fewer still will be aware that the system was upgraded at the end of last year because the hardware, installed during the 1980s, was obsolete and could no longer be maintained. A new Codec carrying switching info for Economy 7 and RDS data for radio (tells your car stereo what station you're listening to) was designed by the BBC's R&D unit and installed in November. No-one was aware of it because it all happened seam- lessly and without fuss – the very epitome of utility service provision, if you will. The great man hopes the folk at the Data Communications Company are taking note… Disconnector William Marchant @richonlyinname 5.1% cut from Eon. Then 5.3% from SSE. Now 5.4% by SP. Stonking arms race. Vertigo nosebleed when we hit 5.5%. Who cancelled their 5.2%? Alistair McGirr @alistairmcgirr Really wish that in European Commissioner speeches they would just say "We're still cracking on, nothing new to report" Doug Parr @doug_parr Another Govt survey shows "those who know more about #fracking tend to be more likely to oppose it" ClimateCentral @climatecentral Sad trombone for coal (happy trombone for the climate) Edie.net @edie The Hulk has a message for David Cameron: DON'T #FRACK BRITAIN! Grouty @groutydota If only oil companies didn't lobby against nuclear and spread propaganda about how unsafe it was... Gavin Corbett @gavincorbett Another piece on the radio news about why it's important to wring more oil out of the North Sea. Orwell would be proud of the doublethink. Unstable Mongoose @u_mongoose @ChivuStoica @brotherflounder Wow, I've always thought the Green Party was a little bit wonkish but they've gone to plaid, haven't they? John Sheehan @JohnSheehanAC Snowless, iceless Lake George Winter Carnival: Anyone still sceptical about Climate Change? Kristen Wyatt @APkristenwyatt "Everybody who drinks water dies. Period." Janak Joshi wins quote of the day in the Colorado House climate change debate HB1004 #coleg