Every year this happens and every year there is one particular sector that has to ignore this advice. The energy network companies go out and battle with extreme weather. What is more, they do it while dealing with one of the most perilous forces in nature – electricity.
This has been the story of the networks. Always there, ever reliable. That is what you get when you pay the networks component of your energy bill. For just 20 per cent of the average bill you get a national network of efficient, reliable infrastructure. The wiring of Britain is one of our greatest engineering stories, if not the greatest. Other countries marvel at our well over 99 per cent reliability.
This has been our story. The silent war horse forever delivering, little acknowledged but vital.
But this is changing. Just before Christmas the Leader article in Utility Week (2 December 2011) referred to this evolving role. Our relationship with the customer is transforming. It is nothing less than revolutionary.
Increasingly, the networks are becoming pivotal not just in their traditional role of securing our nation’s energy supply but also in facilitating the low-carbon transition and – vitally – in an affordable way. That is something an industry that has seen a 50 per cent reduction in costs in real terms since privatisation has a track record of delivering.
Central to making this happen is engaging the customer. This presents a challenge.
The customer’s experience is that energy supply is one of the constants in their lives. They switch it on and switch it off with as little thought as they draw the curtains or open the front door.
This is a challenge that energy network companies are more than keen to take up. Look at the projects currently under way through the Low Carbon Networks Fund. They reflect an unprecedented level of customer focus. They are all about service to the public.
Network companies know that customers hold the key to our energy future. If they can be persuaded to modify small things en masse – such as changing their energy usage so they do not all come home at 5pm and switch on their lights, TV, washing machines at the same time – they can bring down their costs.
But this is only part of the story. We are enablers. We need our customers to use energy more constructively, and to do that we must make it easier for them. We cannot promise lower bills, but we can help them to minimise cost rises.
For the networks, this means ensuring the wires and pipes can handle the capacity at peak times. It may mean conducting electricity over long distances from source to outlet as well as connecting microgeneration and integrating the electrification of transport and heat.
We have the opportunity to inform and enlighten the public, and make them our allies. For our part, we can introduce the technological advances we need to manage demand more effectively.
By working with customers we can deliver this change, and central to that is building a new and exciting relationship. To transform this relationship, network companies must talk to the public in a way they have not done before. However, we will be building on a relationship that already exists. It is based on service.
The networks combine the highest aspirations of public service with the commercial rigour to deliver it efficiently and cost effectively. Just like the linesmen and women who are out this winter putting people’s supplies back on.
It is that very same spirit that will deliver a smarter future. Yes, the relationship with the customer is changing, but the networks are embracing it. Delivering to the public is at its heart – as it has always been.
David Smith is chief executive of the Energy Networks Association
This article first appeared in Utility Week’s print edition of 20 January 2012.
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