Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 22ND - 28TH JUNE 2018 | 21 Customers Yorkshire Water hosted its first leakage hackathon as part of a bid to increase transparency for customers. The Open Data showcase is part of the company's initiative to release most of its operational and service data by 2020. It has started with criti- cal areas such as leakage and pollution, having set ambitious targets to reduce internal sewer WATER Yorkshire Water leakage hackathon aims to increase transparency flooding by 70 per cent, reducing pollution incidents by 40 per cent and leakage reduction by 40 per cent. Using data better could be critical in achieving those reduc- tions and aer a launch event workshop in March, Yorkshire Water gathered a panel of data experts to come up with new ideas for the hackathon. Hackathon participants were split into seven teams and used the millions of lines of data the company has released on the Data Mill North website. Yorkshire Water will progress two ideas from the event, both of which focused on using data captured by acoustic loggers. The first idea was to catalogue the sounds captured by the loggers using a spectrograph. It was inspired by Shazam – the This week Prepay alternatives rarely considered Rise in prepayment meters fitted under warrant prompts calls for suppliers to consider alternatives The number of energy custom- ers forced to install prepayment meters has risen for the first time in five years, chiefly driven by British Gas, says an Ofgem report. The regulator's annual consumer vulnerability report for 2017 shows the number of warrants to force the installation of prepay meters has increased for the first time since 2012, bucking a "slow decline" . Ofgem is "very concerned" about the increase in the use of warrants, which it said should be used only when other options have been exhausted. "Suppliers are not doing enough to explore alternatives," said the report. Of all the medium-sized and large suppliers, Brit- ish Gas, Ovo and Utility Warehouse have the highest numbers of prepay meters installed under warrant per 1,000 newly-indebted customers. Ovo stopped installing them under warrant last September and although Utility Warehouse has the highest rate of forced installations, it has cut the number of warrants. Ofgem also expressed concern about the way smaller and medium-sized suppliers deal with indebted custom- ers. It said 24 per cent of indebted gas customers of small and medium-sized suppliers were on repayment plans compared to 60 per cent of those with their larger counterparts. Some smaller and medium-sized suppliers have "considerably fewer" customers on their Prior- ity Services Register than larger suppliers, prompting concerns they may not be identifying eligible customers adequately. Responding to the report, Gillian Guy, chief executive at Citizens Advice, said: "Clearly, many suppliers could do more to get customers in debt on to repayment plans and signpost them towards support." DB ENERGY First Utility to hike prices by 5.9% First Utility has announced it is raising its prices by an average of 5.9 per cent for dual-fuel cus- tomers on its standard variable tariff, starting on 23 July. The typical annual energy bill will swell by £67 – or £5.58 a month – to £1,199. The supplier, which was bought by oil giant Shell towards the end of last year, said the price hike is primarily the result of a 30 per cent increase in policy costs, such as low-carbon subsidies, over the past year. It said wholesale gas and electricity prices also grew by 9.2 per cent during the period, although network costs fell by 1 per cent. The overall effect was a 9.2 per cent increase in total external costs per dual fuel cus- tomer. The company will absorb a 3.3 per cent cost increase but pass the rest on to consumers. ENERGY Number of SMETS2 meters tops 1,000 The number of installed SMETS2 meters is more than 1,000, Greg Clark has revealed. Responding to a question in parliament on the progress of the SMETS2 programme, the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy secretary said 1,000 of the devices had been installed and connected to the Data Com- munications Company (DCC). Clark said the figure was a "significant milestone because it represents the beginning of the rollout of the next generation of meters". The secretary of state's state- ment means that the number of installed SMETS2 meters has doubled since February, when energy and climate change min- ister Claire Perry told the House of Commons that 450 were con- nected to the DCC system – 80 in households. SMETS2 meters are designed to be interoperable, meaning customers can switch suppliers. ENERGY Fuel poverty might be overstated Only 7 per cent of those classi- fied as fuel poor are struggling financially and finding it difficult to heat their homes, according to an analysis published by Citizens Advice Scotland (CAS). The analysis of Scottish Household Survey data, and interviews with fuel-poor households by Ipsos Mori, is in the report Speaking Up: Understanding Fuel Poverty Sup- port Needs. The report said its finding were "somewhat misleading" because "managing financially" meant "very different things to different groups of people". The research found that cer- tain types of household are more likely to struggle to heat their homes affordably, including peo- ple in rented flats, those in rural homes, younger people and those who use electric heating. A slow decline in prepay installations has stalled application that identifies films, movies and music based on a short sample. When new sounds are recorded they are matched with other sounds, making it quicker to identify leaks. The second idea introduced a graphic user interface for quick assessment of logger data, allowing the company to priori- tise leaks by the size of bursts and history of the site.

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