Keeping the lights on: a thank you

Firstly, we hope you are all safe and well.

Secondly, thank you to all of those who have kept our lights on and our energy networks running over the past three months. There has been (rightly) a lot of coverage of the role played by NHS staff, care workers, retail and warehouse staff, delivery drivers and refuse collectors in sustaining us during lockdown. Very little credit has been given to those who have made sure that we have power, warmth and water: so this is just a small thank you from the team at SE2.

Over the past few months, we have seen a radical shift in demand on our energy networks.

Daytime demand has slumped so much that those on time-of-use tariffs have been paid to use electricity during the long sunny days of April and May.

People have faced the prospect of increased household energy bills, and it's to the credit of Government and the energy suppliers that the issue of debt and payments was dealt with quickly and quietly very early on to give householders the reassurance they needed about what would happen if they fell behind on their bills.

Businesses have and are changing the way that they think about their workspaces, in part to enable social distancing, but also perhaps questioning the value of old ways of working.

I'm not going to forecast anything here, if only because I'm unsure of what will happen as we reboot business, hospitality, leisure, travel and education. My view tends to fluctuate between "it'll all go back to how it was and we won't have gained anything" to "we have a massive opportunity to bring about some meaningful change based on our locked down lives". For the energy system, there are perhaps two things I'd take away.

Firstly, we have seen the value of having a system which is flexible. There has been great work over the years by the Association for Decentralised Energy, the Energy Systems Catapult, many of the network operators and others to explore how we create a system which can be clean, efficient and flexible and we've seen it in operation in recent months (admittedly, not in the throes of a heating season).

And secondly, we have seen the value of a system which is human. It is possible to have compassion in commerce; it is possible to forgive debt; it is possible to look at the energy system as providing an essential public good which helps drive so much of what we do in the business, public and domestic spheres. I'd like to hope that that humanity and compassion will carry forward. It would go a long way to sustaining the fragile trust that exists between energy suppliers and the general public.