Utility Week

UTILITY Week 8th April 2016

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UTILITY WEEK | 8TH - 14TH APRIL 2016 | 3 Leader Ellen Bennett This week 4 | Seven days 6 | People & Opinion 9 Policy & Regulation 9 | News Networks and innovation 10 | Analysis The future of network innovation 12 Finance & Investment 12 | News Fiddler's Ferry to stay open for another year 13 | Market view What next for UK solar? 14 Operations & Assets 14 | High viz ORE Catapult's Levenmouth Demonstration Turbine 16 | Game changer Real-time monitoring of water assets 19 | Analysis Coal is not quite dead yet 21 | Analysis The forgotten renewable? 22 | Market view Revolutionising the way we consume power to cut emissions 23 Customers 23 | News Brockovich hits out at Scottish Water 24 | Market view Npower's disastrous year 25 | Market view Adding value for water customers 26 | Market view How to win back the trust of vulnerable customers 29 Markets & Trading 29 | Market view Water competition must heed the mistakes of gas and electricity 30 Community 31 | Disconnector Grid move is not panic – it's pragmatism Damned if you do, damned if you don't. National Grid came under fire this week for handing out contracts to two coal-fired power stations – Fiddler's Ferry and one of the remaining coal units at Drax – for unspecified sums. The so-called black start contracts see the power stations paid to remain on hand and capable of starting up without electricity from the grid in the case of a national power outage. It's an unlikely scenario, but one that could happen and must be planned for. Conveniently, the contracts have been awarded just in time to keep Fiddler's Ferry open for another year. National Grid won't say when it usually awards black start contracts, or how many it hands out, feeding suspicions that these contracts have been signed with the ulterior motive of keeping Fiddler's Ferry operational until 2017 at least. National Grid has thus been lambasted in the national media for keeping coal online aer its natural extinction date, in contravention of stated government policy to be coal-free by 2025; and accused of being in a "blind panic". But let's turn this on its head. Say National Grid had awarded the black start contracts elsewhere, and Fiddler's Ferry had closed, just ahead of the upcoming, long expected capacity crunch. National Grid could quite fairly have been accused of failing to look at the system in the round, and failing to use all the means at its disposal to keep maximum capacity operating at a time of extraordinary (and temporary) need. It's no secret that the power system is in the throes of transforma- tional change. Indeed, it is government policy – hence the capacity market, and a ra of other interventions. The crunch time comes over the next couple of years as traditional forms of generation go offline before the system is fully geared up to cope with the intermit- tency of renewable forms of generation. For National Grid to be keeping its options open at such a time looks more like pragmatism than panic. •  Utility Week takes its traditional spring break in print on 15 April, and returns with an issue on 22 April. In the meantime, you can stay up to date with news, analysis and more at www.utilityweek.co.uk. Ellen Bennett, Editor ellen.bennett@fav-house.com GAS 9 | News Massara: 'capacity market not working' 26 | Market view How to win back the trust of vulnerable customers WATER 16 | Game changer Real-time monitoring of water assets 23 | News Brockovich hits out at Scottish Water 25 | Market view Adding value for water customers 29 | Market view Water competition must heed the mistakes of gas and electricity ELECTRICITY 12 | News Fiddler's Ferry to stay open for another year 13 | Market view What next for UK solar? 14 | High viz Levenmouth Demonstration Turbine 19 | Analysis Coal is not quite dead yet ENERGY 9 | News Networks: continue funding innovation 10 | Analysis The future of network innovation 22 | Market view Revolutionising the way we consume power 24 | Market view Npower's disastrous year Knowledge worth Keeping Visit the DownloaDs section of Utility week's website http://www.utilityweek.co.uk/ downloads Wipro: Digitisation and the Internet of Things http://bit.ly/1LbI3Jt Achilles: How can utility suppliers get noticed by big industry buyers? http://bit.ly/1KaByWW

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