The House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs report ‘The Price of Power: Reforming the Electricity Market’.
The report, published today, is the output of the Committee’s enquiry into the impact of the policies of successive governments on the electricity market.
Simon Daniel, CEO of Moixa, provided evidence as a witness in one of the Committee’s sessions. He explained how energy storage can help address some of the key challenges the UK energy market is facing:
“Energy demand is rising in electricity for all the low-power electronic stuff; the internet of things has 50 billion devices are always on and always on at peak. No price can change the behaviour in houses in relation to that technology. In Glastonbury, people spend £3 to charge their mobile phone.
No grid price will get people to change their behaviour on domestic technology. You might for a white good but not for an electronic good that is on at peak. That is the critical opportunity we see for batteries.
In California, a battery is a solar battery. In Europe, a battery is a solar battery in the summer and a winter battery in the winter, because it deals with managing the peaks. Europe is also a domestic driven peak, so while homes are about a third of the electricity use for non-heating over a year, they are about two-thirds of peak. Therefore reducing demand in a domestic property in Europe that might involve a battery that does not require a behavioural response is, in our view, a critical technology.”
A full copy of the transcript can be downloaded here.
The Committee examined the impact of the policies of successive governments on the electricity market. In its report the Committee identifies two key failures in the current market: the narrow amount of spare capacity, particularly in winter, and the rising cost of electricity to consumers and businesses. The Committee concludes that constant intervention by successive Governments in the electricity sector has led to a complicated, uncompetitive market that is failing consumers and businesses.