Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 1ST - 7TH JULY 2016 | 5  On the morning of the publication of the Competition and Markets Authority's recommendations for the amelioration of the energy market, campaigners from Switched on London climbed the authority's offices in London, protesting about its "whitewash" final report. The group is calling for publicly owned energy, and accuses the CMA of "loving the big six energy suppliers". 190 Number of days (from 1 July) until water market opening in England. 9 Sep The deadline for entries for the 2016 Utility Week Awards, which take place on 12 December. 24% The European Environment Agency has revealed that greenhouse gas emissions from EU member states in 2014 were 24.4 per cent below 1990 levels, with emissions falling 4.1 per cent between 2013 and 2014. "It has completely missed the mark" Independent supplier First Utility accused the Competition and Markets Authority of "completely missing the mark" in its investigation into the energy market. ENERGY WATER Bristol Water has teamed up with campaign group City to Sea to encourage people in Bristol to drink less bottled water. They will hold a series of summer events to get people involved in the Refill Bristol campaign, whereby thirsty partici- pants can refill their water bottles for free at one of 200 refill stations around the city. The principal aim is to reduce the number of single-use plastic bottles that end up in the sea. Bristol Water makes it easy to refill your used drinking water bottles Water companies "want storage for renewables" Battery energy storage is the technology that water companies are "most keen" to see developed to transform their renewable energy strategies, delegates heard at the WWT Water Industry Energy conference last month. Effective on-site energy storage would help smooth out the peaks and troughs that are inherent in renewable generation using solar panels and wind turbines, the conference in Bir- mingham heard. It would help large treatment sites become more self-sufficient by making the most of their own generation capability, especially at peak times when energy from the grid is more expensive. When the expert speakers were asked by conference chair Professor Tom Stephenson of Cranfield University to name the technology that would make the most difference to their energy strategy, batteries were the near-unanimous choice. Ray Arrell, renewable energy engineer at South West Water, said: "I think there's a real operational opportunity at some of our sites." Brexit "bad for smart grids", warns academic A leading academic has warned the UK's decision to leave the European Union will hinder the transition to smarter grids. Siemen's professor of energy systems at Newcastle University, Phil Taylor, said the UK has "diminished its ability to use interconnectors" for system balancing and made decarbonising the energy system harder. He said Brexit will make it harder to negotiate good prices, and our use of interconnectors will be "less flexible and more expensive". "I think that's really a bad thing for prices, but it's also a really bad thing for system balancing," he added. "We are trying to move towards an energy system where we have less spinning reserve and less capacity margin, which is expensive and carbon-rich, by replacing that with flexibility of all sorts, I feel like we have almost certainly diminished our ability to use interconnectors to help us with that balancing." In April, Charlotte Ramsay, National Grid's head of strategy, markets and regulation, European business development, told the Energy and Climate Change Committee that the UK would have to try "even harder to be influential", but that looking at the example of Norway, which isn't in the EU, it is possible to achieve. Taylor also said that it is an "absolute proven fact that island power systems and smaller power systems are harder to decarbonise" while keeping the grid stable. He also expects the out vote to cut research income at academic institutions by as much as 20 per cent, and limit access to the "vibrant energy research community" in Europe.

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