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UTILITY WEEK | 18TH - 24TH NOVEMBER 2016 | 3 Leader Jane Gray This week 4 | Seven days 6 | People & Opinion 8 | Topic The UK has pioneered utility sector competition, but how open are the electricity and gas markets and have they delivered for customers? And what are the prospects for success with water? 16 Policy & Regulation 16 | News Commitment to coal phase-out reaffirmed 17 | Market view Ofgem and Beis weight up the right approach to the regulation of electricity storage 18 Finance & Investment 18 | News Grid: UK does not yield excessive profits 19 | Analysis National Grid's financial results fall flat 20 | Market view The interconnector with France is both a threat and an opportunity 22 Operations & Assets 20 | High Viz The Amager waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen, Denmark 25 | Market view Battery storage is due for technological step change 25 Customers 25 | News Most of smart meter network goes live 28 | Market view How to best manage customer 'onboarding' 30 Community 31 | Disconnector Cold weather could be the death of small energy suppliers This could be a harsh winter for the UK energy sector – and for once, this is not primarily because of security of supply fears. As National Grid snuggles into a cold season of higher than anticipated capacity margins, elsewhere in the market, small energy suppliers are exposed. Some say that many will succumb to the elements this winter. Speculation has been mounting for some months now about the vulnerability of small energy suppliers in a winter that is expected to bring continued volatility in commodity prices. In August, a leading consultancy told Utility Week it thought the winter would bring a cull of small suppliers with immature hedging strategies. Last month, Ramsay Dunning, general manager of The Co- operative Energy, said he thought peers would go bust because, in their mad scramble for market share, they had set below-cost tariffs that they will not be able to support over the colder months. Then, at Energy UK's annual conference this month, energy sec- tor analyst Peter Atherton added grist to the mill of forecasts about small supplier demise. Atherton observed that many small suppliers are "undercapitalised" both financially and in terms of human capi- tal. A period of sharp wholesale energy price rises would therefore precipitate a "shakeout" of weak suppliers from the market. Atherton welcomed this prospect as "useful" for a market that has become overcrowded with opportunist new entrants. Clearly though, if energy suppliers do go bust en masse, concerns about what happens to customers and their money will be acute. Anticipating this, Ofgem recently introduced a new safety net for consumer credit balances if their supplier goes out of business. This was designed to sustain confidence in energy switching, which has increased significantly this year – especially to smaller and newer market entrants. Ofgem's proposed protection regime does come with a small price tag for consumers at large. An industry levy to cover the costs of honouring credit balances would be passed on to them in the event of an insolvency and a failure to identify a supplier of last resort. If this winter is to be as harsh on small suppliers as commenta- tors such as Atherton predict though, support of this levy may be the lesser of two evils. Jane Gray, Acting Editor janegray@fav-house.com GAS 28 | Market view How to best manage customer 'onboarding' WATER 16 | News Ofwat mulls licence changes for firms 25 | News Competition described as 'logical' ELECTRICITY 16 | News Commitment to coal phase-out reaffirmed 20 | Market view The interconnector with France is both a threat and an opportunity 20 | High Viz The Amager waste-to- energy plant in Copenhagen, Denmark 25 | Market view Battery storage is due for technological step change ENERGY 16 | Energy Start-up launched to 'help power Africa' 17 | Market view Ofgem and Beis weight up the right approach to the regulation of electricity storage 19 | Analysis National Grid's financial results fall flat 25 | News Most of smart meter network goes live Visit the Downloads section of the website WNS: The UK Smart Meter Rollout http://bit.ly/2espIJ3 Webfleet: How SGN is set to save £1M with Webfleet http://bit.ly/2eh3HAL Certas: Balancing capacity market concerns : setting the record straight on fuel http://bit.ly/2essYnG