DECC – Page 2 – Creative Connectivity

Smart Power, Smart Meters and Smart Batteries

This week saw the launch of a new report entitled Smart Power, which investigates the future of our electricity supply. It comes from a new body – the National Infrastructure Committee (NIC), and highlights the hole in supply caused by the planned closure of two thirds of our existing power stations by 2030, providing recommendations on the changes that they believe are required to ensure security of supply.

Unfortunately it’s promoted itself using the old trick of highlighting its major benefit as saving consumers money, with the headline press message suggesting it could deliver them savings of up to £8.1 billion per year in 2030.

I wish that the sector could get over its fixation with these spurious claims, so that we can focus on the real problem, which is the lack of a joined up energy policy. The “savings” in this report aren’t what a consumer would expect a saving to be, which is lower prices, but instead a potential reining in of cripplingly higher prices which would result from doing nothing. In other words, if we spend a bit more to increase bills now, we might not have to spend a lot more as a result of a further decade of dithering. It reminds me of the protection rackets of gangster Chicago, where shopkeepers were forced to pay off mobsters to prevent having their businesses destroyed. Why the energy sector wants to continue with its amateur production of “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” escapes me, but that’s clearly who the commission’s chair, Lord Adonis, is modelling himself on. Cauliflowers all round…

UK Parliament calls for Evidence on Smart Metering Programme

As readers of my blog will know, I am concerned about the GB Smart Metering programme, not because of any issues with smart meters per se – they can be an important part of a smarter grid. My concern has always been that the GB programme will fail to deliver most of the potential benefits of smart metering, instead saddling consumers with the cost of a lot of obsolete technology.

Now it looks as if that message may be getting across. Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee has just started an evidence check and is requesting input from anyone with relevant views on the GB Smart Metering Programme. You have until midday on 28^th January and can submit comments on their website. It claims they will be “pre-moderated” and that “Your comment will not be treated as formal written evidence to the Committee.” I hope that’s just standard wording and not a devious attempt to dismiss evidence.

Some initial mistakes pushed the technology in the wrong direction. Instead of correcting them, DECC has applied more and more complex sticking plasters whilst denying the underlying issues, to the point where the programme is now:

The most complex system in the world
The most expensive system in the world
Based on technology which is heading to be obsolete by the early 2020s.

To justify its value, DECC has ignored evidence on consumer behaviour, relying instead on wishful thinking from academics and consultants. As more is learnt from other deployments around the world it is clear that the benefits have been vastly overstated. One utility – British Gas, almost certainly has enough data to provide a clear picture on long term benefits, but this has not been released, probably because it would torpedo the current impact assessment.

I believe it is the time for a thorough review to ensure that Britain gets the smart metering system it needs. If the current programme continues it will almost certainly overrun on cost. Parts of it will be obsolete by the time the deployment is complete and a new replacement programme will need to start by the end of 2020 if the meters are to continue operating, with all of the associated costs. It has all of the hallmarks of a major IT disaster, but one where the public will be more conscious than ever before of the true cost of a Government screw-up, because it will be clearly visible on their inflated energy bills.

The UK Government departments and Non-Departmental Government Bodies have widely different approaches to basing policy on evidence. At its best we have NICE – the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which is world recognised for its competence in using evidence to direct clinical and prescribing policy. However, at the shallow end of the evidence pool we find the desperate doggy paddling of DECC, whose mandarins still pursue the approach of policy leading evidence, i.e. they make up their minds about what they want to do, then manufacture the “evidence” to support the policy.

GB Smart Meters Delayed Again. Again.

It’s that time of year when the days get dark and cold, and the energy media turns its interest to the possibility of power cuts in the coming winter. Which also means it’s the time for DECC to slip out their Annual Report on the Roll-out of Smart Meters, in the hope that no one will notice it.

As expected, everything’s slipped, but this time, for the first time, we get an example of how DECC fudges the benefits figures they claim justify the smart metering programme. I sometimes wonder whether I’m the only person who reads these reports beyond the rose-tinted executive summary, as if you dig beneath the spin, they tell a clear and repeated story of a project that is going badly wrong. So for anyone who didn’t make it past page 6, here’s the truth about what’s happening with the GB smart metering deployment.

Use More Energy. Towards a UK Energy Policy

Three years ago, in a utility conference in Atlanta, I sat through a keynote by Tom Fanning, President and CEO of Southern Company – one of the largest US utilities. In a typically Texan barn-storming style he argued that “to improve human existence let’s use more energy where we should”, going on to promote the message that every Texan in every trailer park was equally deserving of air conditioning and a 60″ TV. It wasn’t what the audience expected, many of whom had come with concerns about smart meters, energy efficiency and outages.

Earlier this week I sat through the IET’s annual Mountbatten lecture, given by Dieter Helm, Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Oxford. The subject was The New Energy Landscape – low fossil fuel prices, decarbonisation and new technologies, based on his updated book – “The Carbon Crunch: How we’re getting climate change wrong – and how to fix it”. Much to the surprise of the audience, this time mainly engineers involved with the energy industry, he gave much the same message – that’s it’s time to stop worrying about the cost of energy or energy efficiency. Instead we should be planning a future where we can use as much as we want.

I urge you to watch his lecture, which is available on the IET website. At the risk of oversimplification here’s my very abbreviated take on it, as well as some of the potential problems in changing Government policy.

Why is DECC more secretive than the MoD?

Energy policy is one of the most important things for any country to get right. If energy supplies fail, the impact on the population and economy is immediate and potentially disastrous. So you’d think that debate about it would be fairly open, not least because an open debate helps make a fairly arcane subject a little more accessible. But as readers of this blog will know, the UK’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has something of a reputation for secrecy, doing their best to block any Freedom of information requests and refusing to admit any problems with their expensive projects.

In 2011, the previous UK Government set up a Major Project Authority group to try and provide more insight into the portfolio of large, transformative projects. It’s an excellent initiative, which has just produced its third annual report. As well as showing progress, or lack of it, you get a good idea of which departments are least open. Of all the Government departments, you would probably have expected the Ministry of Defence to be the most secretive about its projects. It’s not. DECC stands out as the one which is still withholding most information on its projects. Which makes you wonder why the Department for Keeping the Lights On is so desperate to keep everyone in the dark? Under the MPA’s pressure, they are releasing more information, but recent events suggest their heart’s still not into open disclosure.

Pressure grows to stop GB Smart Metering

It’s taken a long time for the bubble to burst, but there are signs that reality is starting to break through the Panglossian fixed grins of the British smart metering establishment. As readers of this site will know, I’ve been critical of the GB programme. I have no issue with smart meters per se, but what is being proposed for deployment in Britain before 2020 is unlikely to offer any of the cited benefits. Instead it’s likely to add over £11 billion to the energy bills of English, Welsh and Scottish consumers.

DECC, the Department of Energy and Climate Change, have spent much of the last five years fending off criticism and fighting Freedom of Information requests to explain how they came up with their figures justifying the British smart metering programme. Until recently they’ve managed to pull the wool over the eyes of ministers and the National Audit Office, but that strategy finally unravelled with the recently released report from the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, which concluded that “without significant and immediate changes to the present policy, the programme runs the risk of falling far short of expectations. At worst it could prove to be a costly failure.”

A further nail in the coffin of DECC optimism came today, when the highly respected Institute of Directors’ Policy Unit issued a scathing critique of the programme in “Not too clever: will Smart Meters be the next Government IT disaster?”, which goes as far as to suggest the best course may be to abandon the programme altogether.

Further evidence suggests that the programme is considerably further behind than many of those involved realise. There is also a growing concern about its cost within utilities, many of whom would be happy to abandon some or all aspects of it. The first task of whoever is elected in May could be to make the decision to kill it.