It's Not Price, It's Capacity

Let me remind you of this. In their dash for populist headlines about the poor British consumer being robbed by wicked utility companies our dear leaders seem to have forgotten that there is a need for investment - in new generation capacity, in distribution and transmission hardware, in control systems. Companies will only do this if they see that they will be able to make a decent return on that investment. Kicking them because they don't follow spot market prices down (notice that there's never an exhortation to follow them up!) won't help that situation. (And those self same politicians seem to overlook the fact that energy tends to be bought forward on long term contracts - a good way of reducing volatility - but, of course, not immediately reflective of spot prices).

It's capacity that matters - not the consumer's bill.

(Oh, and perhaps someone could look up the meaning of "crisis" before chuntering on about "the cost of living crisis").

Another Reason for not Voting UKIP

EDIE last week reported that UKIP want to scrap the Climate Change Act. Apparently the party's energy spokesman, one Roger Helmer, thinks that climate change is still "open to question" claiming that there "hasn't been any global warming for the last 18 years". Perhaps a quick glance at a New Statesman profile of him would be worth while. I am staggered that people actually vote for him.

Is the Oil Price Fall a Good Thing?

Glass half full or half empty? Probably a bit of both - as one of my wine suppliers put it > either way there's room for more wine!

There are two main drivers for the slump in price: on the supply side non-OPEC producers (principally the US and Canada) have sharply increase production (think fracking); on the demand side there is economic weakness in many developed nations (Europe, Japan, China).

The supply side factor is probably the dominant one so there's reason not to read the falling price as indicating catastrophic demand shrinkage as a result of economic woes. Indeed Christine Lagarde recently suggested that the oil price weakness could add 0.8% to GDP growth for many advanced economies.

All in all what we are seeing is a transfer of wealth from oil producers to oil consumers.

Of course, none of this helps the greening of our energy supply.

"Giant Battery"

Great to see another energy storage facility actually kick off. I've blogged a few times on the critical need for bulk storage as back-up for intermittent sources and now there is to be a new one actually linked into the network. The Edie report doesn't say anything about the storage technology being utilised but judging from the project application form it's relatively standard litium-ion batteries that will be used. So I guess that really the only innovation is the size. 'Tis one to watch.

Climate Change - a Threat Multiplier

That's the claim of Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti as reported by Building for Change. And it's difficult to argue with - climate change is likely to increase the incidence of humanitarian crises exacerbating the likelihood of conflict (think water wars, for instance). Of course, we also have our own internal multpliers - daft politicians who blunder into stupid, ill-thought out and unwinnable wars in the likes of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Domestic Concentrated Solar

I've recently come across this site advertising a domestic scale concentrated solar hot water system. There's a suggestion that this is the first domestic concentrated solar system on the (US) market. The suppliers claim the increased efficiency over flat plate or evacuated tube systems gives payback up to 3 years earlier, under US conditions. I'm not sure exactly what their methodology is, and I have no desire to do any number crunching myself. However, I have one comment: our own flat plate system is more than adequate for our needs so a more efficient system would only produce our requirements more quickly which makes me think that in our case, if we were trying to choose a system right now, the deciding factor would be capital cost.

In Praise of Radio 3

In last weekend's Sunday Times Culture section there is an excellent article on Radio 3 by Bryan Appleyard. I sometimes find myself taking exception to Appleyard's writings but in this case he's pretty much spot on. The target, in general terms, is the dumming down of broadcasting and the transmission of cultural content driven by the populist stance of philistinic politicians and "managers".  Two of the former singled out by Appleyard are Ed Vaizey (a Classic FM listener) and Tom Watson ("Radio 3...is becoming a niche station"). As Appleyard pithily points out, Radio 3 was established by the Attlee government (as "The Third Programme") in the conviction that nothing was too good for the working man. If anything it is Classic FM - a purveyor of "these you have loved" and not much more - that is the niche station. Radio 3 is much, much more. I won't steal any more of Appleyard's essay - just urge you to read it.