Featured Posts
Time to accept that wind farm costs are not falling
There has been a consistent narrative that the cost of building new wind farms is falling, with falling subsidy [...]
Windfall tax harms oil and gas production and must be cut
In May last year, the UK Government introduced a windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies [...]
Why Norway’s views on energy security should ring alarm bells across Europe
Norway's energy security would appear to be a done deal, yet the past couple of years have been very [...]
Addressing the high real cost of renewable generation
Over the past few months we have been inundated with claims from interested parties that more renewables are the [...]
Recent Posts
What next for energy markets in 2019?
It’s always interesting at this time of year to look back over the past year and ahead to what might be expected in the year to come. This time last year, I expected the retail price cap to be big [...]
All spruced up – the history of Christmas lights
According to The Week, the US uses an average of 6.63 billion kWh of electricity each year on Christmas lights - more than the entire annual consumption of El Salvador (5.35 billion kWh) and Ethiopia (5.30 billion kWh), and [...]
Ofgem publishes next steps in network charging reform
Last week Ofgem published its “minded to” decision on electricity network charging reform as part of its Targeted Charging Review (“TCR”) into the way in which residual transmission charges are recovered from consumers, and on certain “embedded benefits”: Charges [...]
National Audit Office report highly critical of smart meters programme
On Friday, the National Audit Office (“NAO”) published its latest evaluation of the UK’s smart meters programme and concluded: “The facts are that the programme is late, the costs are escalating, and in 2017 the cost of installing smart [...]
Ofgem to tighten rules for challenger suppliers and investigates RO defaults
Today Ofgem has announced it is taking action against a number of challenger suppliers that have failed to make scheduled payments under the Renewables Obligation scheme. Suppliers had until 31 October to pay outstanding sums into the late payment [...]
European Court ruling leads to capacity market suspension
Almost out of the blue, last week, while all attention was on Brexit, came a decision from the General Court of the European Union that has led to the suspension of the GB Capacity Market. This means that all [...]
Will time-of-use pricing generate meaningful changes in electricity consumption?
There has been much hype of late surrounding the advent of “time-of-use” (“ToU”) energy tariffs for domestic consumers with some claiming consumers will be able to make large savings while others suggest consumers might be ripped off by “surge [...]
UKPN to test new voltage stabilisation technology
The challenges posed to electricity grids by adding increasing amounts of intermittent renewable generation are well known, and costly to manage, however a Scottish technology company claims to have the answer. Faraday Grid, believes it can massively increase grid [...]
Another two small energy suppliers close as Ofgem reports on the state of the market
On the 11 October Ofgem published its second State of the Energy Market report, concluding that while there have been improvements in the retail market, with customers now having more energy suppliers and innovative deals to choose from, and [...]
Opening access to the Balancing Mechanism for smaller aggregated assets
National Grid recently published a roadmap to widening access to the Balancing Mechanism to smaller, distributed assets and demand-side response. The increasing de-centralisation of the electricity system, along with the growth in intermittent generation, is making the task of [...]
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