Utility Week

4 | 10TH - 16TH NOVEMBER 2017 | UTILITY WEEK STORY BY NUMBERS Seven days... National media UK households near Cuadrilla fracking site to get £2,000 each Households living within 1km of the UK's first commercial frack- ing operation are to receive about £2,000 each in compensation from Cuadrilla, the energy company behind the contentious shale gas project. Financial Times, 6 November Scottish firm seeks funding to help sell tidal turbine A developer of a tidal energy device is looking for new investment to move closer to commercial sales. Scotrenewables Tidal Power has hired investment bank Simmons & Company International to help explore financing options. The company did not say how much it is looking to raise. The Times, 7 November European energy groups push EU for tougher climate change goals Some of Europe's largest energy companies have accused the EU of lacking ambition in the fight against climate change and urged more aggressive targets for growth in renewable power. Financial Times, 5 November Councils to give massive refunds to millions of renters Millions of pounds are being put aside by councils to compensate tenants who had water charges added to their rent. They are bracing themselves for huge payouts aer claims they overcharged – because money paid to them by water firms should have been used to cut bills. Up to four million people could be in line for refunds. Sunday Mirror, 9 November Ofgem: radical overhaul of network charging needed O fgem has proposed a radi- cal overhaul of charging that could see users of behind-the-meter generation facing increased network costs. The regulator said the current arrangements are distorting the market and allowing some users to avoid paying their fair share. Charges for use of the electricity network are divided between forward-looking charges, which reflect the individual impact of users on network costs due to reinforce- ments, and residual charges, which reflect the sunk costs of the existing network. In an update to a significant code review launched over the summer, Ofgem has announced plans to levy residual charges solely on suppliers in future. At the moment they are paid by both generators and suppliers, with the majority of charges fall- ing on the supply side. The regulator is also exam- ining new mechanisms for determining residual charges for suppliers. They are currently calculated on the basis of net consumption by customers, meaning they do not apply to power produced from behind- the-meter generation. Ofgem wants that to change. The working paper lists the potential alternatives as fixed charges per user, capacity demand charges and gross con- sumption charges (for business customers only). Explaining the proposals in a blog on Ofgem's website, senior partner for energy systems Andrew Wright writes: "We want to make sure that all users pay a fair share of the costs even if they are only using the networks when their on-site generation is not producing electricity." The proposals were criticised by the Association for Decentral- ised Energy (ADE), which said they would raise energy bills for businesses. ADE director Tim Rotheray argued that exposing on-site generation to residual charges would force businesses to "pay over the odds for net- works they barely use". Ofgem has also released a working paper examining the options for the future of forward-looking charges and network access arrangements. TG See news, p7. "Our experience is that this should be a time-limited cap" Energy minister Greg Clark tells MPs the mooted market-wide price cap will be temporary. Renewable heat ouput falls in Scotland Renewable heat output in Scotland has fallen for the first time in nine years, official figures show. 1.71GW Renewable heat capacity in 2016. 13% Rise in capacity from 2015. 3.4TWh Amount of useful heat produced in 2016. 11% Fall in production of useful heat from 2015. 5% Proportion of non-electrical heat demand generated from renewable sources in 2016. 5.4% Amount this was down on the non- electrical heat demand generated from renewable sources for 2015.

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