Non-discrimination clauses in the retail energy sector

The British Energy regulator will soon review a non-discrimination licence condition which it imposed to ensure that energy retailers charge the same mark-up in different regions. Many consumers are loyal to incumbent firms, necessitating heavy discounting by entrants to attract customers, which had led to regional price discrimination. Matching characteristics of the energy market to models of discrimination, we identify the necessary conditions for the licence condition to have a positive effect for consumers, and explore whether the policy has helped potentially „vulnerable? consumers. We conclude that the most likely effect of the licence condition is to reduce competition in the mainstream energy markets, and welcome the regulator?s latest review of the retail market

“I think we need to get a better generator”: Household resilience to disruption to power supply during storm events

AbstractElectricity is becoming ever more central to the everyday practices of households. As the energy system decarbonises, it is likely that electricity will supply even more services, thereby increasing the dependence of communities on reliable electricity supply. In this situation, the risk of power outages during extreme weather events poses a serious challenge to the safety and wellbeing of communities. However, little is known of the capacity of households to manage normal day-to-day life in such circumstances. This paper focuses on the UK winter storms that occurred in February 2014, the result of which 80,000 homes were left without power and communities not reconnected for several days. We outline the impacts these power outages had on households, describing the challenges faced and the strategies adopted to alleviate impacts. This provides insight into everyday household-level resilience achieved through social and material elements that constitute everyday life

Assessment and optimisation of energy consumption in building communities using an innovative co-simulation tool

Energy efficiency in building sector is attracting an increasing interest in the scientific community, due to its strong impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. In this context, the REMOURBAN H2020 project has carried out a pilot deep refurbishing work on a small cluster of 10 homes, implementing energy saving measures and a hybrid energy-supply system to satisfy the heating and domestic hot water demand. The system aims to achieve near-zero-energy homes level of performance at reasonable cost by offsetting the energy consumption with local energy microgeneration. It is designed as a local low temperature district heating system and includes ground source heat pumps, photovoltaic panels, electric and thermal energy storage devices. The management of the complex hybrid system requires a suitable control strategy to optimise the energy consumption and consequently running cost. With this purpose a co-simulation tool has been developed, coupling a model of the energy system built using Dymola-Modelica and the EnergyPlus model of the buildings. This allows to develop different control strategies aiming to reduce the energy consumption from the grid, maximize the self-consumption of photovoltaic energy and ultimately move away from fossil fuel to sustainable energy resources