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4 | 30TH JUNE - 6TH JULY 2017 | UTILITY WEEK Moixa expands Energy storage firm Moixa has announced it will open a new office in Manchester as part of an ambitious growth strategy. £2.5m Total funds raised to support office opening and growth strategy. £1m Comes from the Greater Manches- ter Combined Authority to sup- port local enter- prise investment. £1.5m Equity investment, including £500,000 from Japan's larg- est utility, Tokyo Electric Power Company. 100,000 By 2020, Moixa aims to have created a "virtual power plant" aggregating the capacity of 100,000 domestic batteries in the UK, includ- ing 50,000 of its own installations. 250MWh Overall capacity of Moixa's planned virtual power plant, which will provide balancing services to National Grid. STORY BY NUMBERS Seven days... National media Smart meter rollout costs spiralling Energy suppliers face rising costs for putting smart meters in millions of homes, adding pressure on firms to raise household bills further next year. Fitting the meters, which automate readings and must be installed in every home and small business by the end of 2020, costs suppliers about £100 per house- hold today. But that will jump by nearly a third to £130 in 2018 as companies spend more time and money trying to contact harder-to-reach custom- ers, according to one of the big six suppliers. Guardian, 26 June Hinkley Point C heading for delays and cost overruns EDF is bracing for a multi-billion euro rise in costs at its Hinkley Point C nuclear site aer a fresh evaluation of the project revealed yet another likely delay. An internal review of the troubled project by senior executives at EDF's French headquarters is expected to confirm fears that the state-backed energy giant will not be able to deliver Hinkley on time or in line with its £18 billion budget. Telegraph, 25 June UK energy firms very fearful of cyber attack Concern over the threat posed by cyber attacks on power stations and electricity grids is "off the scale" in the UK energy sector, according to a leading industry figure. No other country in the world has an energy industry as worried about the risk from cyber threats, such as the WannaCry ransomware attack that recently hit the NHS, the former chief of National Grid Steve Holliday told the Guardian. The issue arose because of the shi from centralised generation. Guardian, 26 June Nolan should resist populist calls to regulate energy prices O fgem's chief executive has been urged to challenge the government's convic- tion that price regulation is required to protect consumers. A group of former regulators, led by Stephen Littlechild, have written to Dermot Nolan setting out a case for rebutting any price cap. Their intervention follows another letter to Nolan, sent by energy secretary Greg Clark last week, that tasked Ofgem with advising on how best to imple- ment a "safeguard tariff ". Littlechild wrote to contest the claim in Clark's letter that the electorate as a whole had "endorsed the approach" of price protection. "The party manifestos pro- posed more than a dozen differ- ent energy measures, including many to assist customers," said Littlechild. "At least two parties did not advocate a price cap (one of these parties reportedly describing the Conservative policy as 'pure economic illit- eracy'). And several parties pro- posed price protection simply as a transitional stage to reintro- ducing public ownership." Littlechild said that Ofgem, "guided by its statutory duties and by the evidence available, should first consider carefully whether there is in fact a case for further restrictive regulatory intervention". This advice was followed by extensive notes reviewing the dynamics of the retail market, and a critique of the Compe- tition and Markets Author- ity's "implausible" claim that consumer detriment amounts to around £1.4 billion a year. Littlechild and his peers concluded that "the domestic retail energy sector is not char- acterised either by excess profits nor by differential prices that indicate market power. Neither absolute nor relative price caps are justified". They did, however, express concern about the impact of environmental and social costs on energy bills, and about the inability of vulnerable custom- ers to access the cheapest tariffs available. JG