Energy Policy
This week I attended an event run by the Energy Institute on whether in the context of the UK’s industrial strategy the policy can keep up with the energy market. One comment that was made repeatedly was that UK businesses are bad at exploiting [...]
13 April 1892 saw the birth of Robert Watson-Watt, the inventor of radar, and descendant of Scottish inventor James Watt after whom the unit of power was named. Also on this day in 1960 the first satellite navigation system was launched and a decade [...]
The question of how electricity storage should be treated by regulators is once again in the news, with National Grid and UK Power Networks making submissions to the UK Government setting out their reasons for wanting to be able to own and operate electricity storage [...]
Once again we hear in the news the ominous threats of energy price caps in response to retailers raising their prices, and while the desire of politicians to respond to consumer anger is understandable, this is a temptation they need to resist. The dangerous [...]
I recently wrote about the calls from the House of Lords for energy security to be prioritised over the other elements of the trilemma. With the end of Winter 16 almost upon us, and with it the end of the Supplementary Balancing Reserve (“SBR”), [...]
Once upon a time we heated our homes and cooked by burning wood we had gathered and chopped ourselves. Later more energy efficient coal was delivered directly to our cellars via small trapdoors at street level. Later yet dirty coal was replaced by cleaner [...]
The much anticipated changes to the embedded benefits regime came a step closer last week with Ofgem’s announcement that it is minded to implement a proposed change to the CUSC that would limit the demand residual component of TNUoS payments to embedded generators to [...]
Last week the UK’s House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs joined the calls for electricity market reform, in a critical report: The Price of Power: Reforming the Electricity Market saying that the Government’s energy policy objectives conflict with each other, and have [...]
Transmission charging is far from simple even in the traditional model of electricity networks, as illustrated by the diagram below. In principle, the costs of bringing electricity from large units of generation to consumers is socialised across users via three main tariffs: Transmission Use of [...]
The question of electricity market competitiveness is never far away, particularly when any of the Big 6 suppliers raise their prices. The level of concern about potential anti-competitive behaviour by the big suppliers who dominate the GB market prompted an investigation by the Competition [...]