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Notes from Energy & Utility Forum 2017


1. Robert Symons, CEO of Western Power Distribution said: “Energy demand could rise by 100% by 2030. Smart grids will be needed to manage electric vehicle charging so that the usage does not exceed the supply capacity at any time during the day.”
2. Spoke to Harry Vickers, Business Development Manager of Camborne Energy Storage, Camborne Capital at the Energy and Utility Forum in London on October 23rd 2017. He told me his company is working with Elon Musk to bring Tesla battery grid storage solutions to the UK.
3. Spoke to Sally Barrett-Williams, Chairman of Energy and Utility Forum on October 23rd, who said subsidies for solar projects had ended and her company’s focus has shifted to energy storage schemes.
4. Spoke to Simon Dowland, PhD, at 13:00 on Sunday 29th October, Simon is now working up in Cambridge at the Cavendish Physics Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, he is working in industry for the company Eight19 Ltd a spin off from a research project to bring new technology from the academic research to market. His company is working on a photo multiplier device which splits photons of unusable wavelengths into multiple photons at useful wavelengths for PV and such like.
5. Spoke to Willem Uijlings, Associate Director Energy Advisory Service at Navigant, at 14:40 on Monday 30th October. He told me that his company is working on large offshore wind projects currently with large turbines 6.3-7 MW in capacity in arrays of 350MW farms. One of his interests is the power quality of delivery of 50hz at 240v reliably. This is to do with energy transformation from DC to AC at substations.
• “SMRs face a hard entry to market with the outlook focussed on developing PV and wind supplies.”
6. My thoughts for Willem were that we could have another large-scale energy storage facility like Dinorwig Power Station in Wales which pumps water up to high altitude during low usage and releases it through turbines at peak times to provide extra peak capacity for the grid. The other point I made was that to prevent brownouts causing the grid to trip as happened to me when I lived next door to the Bescom local utility company headquarters in Bangalore, India was to have a battery pack with an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) device installed at the local substation as part of ‘Smart’ electricity grids.

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