Leader: Let’s talk about Big Brother

“Big Brother to switch off your fridge: Power giants to make millions, but you must pay for ‘sinister’ technology.” As tabloid headlines go, this 2013 example from the Daily Mail is a classic. It is also a stark warning, not so much to members of the public at risk from “sinister technology”, but to National Grid as it seeks to create an energy revolution. “Be careful,” it says, “because demand-side response is all too easy to wilfully misunderstand.”

National Grid is quietly seeking a revolution that will put demand-side measures at the heart of what was once a purely one-way energy system. It has surprised even itself with its burgeoning enthusiasm for demand-side measures, which it expects to be relying on more than 50 per cent of the time by as early as 2030 (see analysis, p24).

Its intentions are laudable. After all, why pay the financial and environmental cost of generating power if you can simply reduce its use? Our entire society, business and domestic, takes the untrammelled guzzling of power, 24/7, as a fundamental right. And therein lies the problem. Not since the miners’ strike of the 1970s has power been rationed; it’s beyond imagining for most people.

They might change their minds. With the cost of energy high and rising, business customers understand the logic of demand-side response – and domestic customers may well do the same. But there will be “Big Brother” headlines aplenty, and National Grid, together with the rest of the industry, needs to get out in front of them. It has got the conversation started, with the Power Responsive campaign launched earlier this month. However, as the campaign’s website states, “it is a practical platform to engage business, suppliers, policy makers, and others”. If those “others” don’t include politicians, the general media, and the public at large, there’s a problem.

If the plan is to roll out significant demand-side response measures on the general consumer side in five to ten years’ time, after focusing on business customers in the first instance, the conversation needs to start now. Let’s talk about Big Brother, let’s have the discussion, and with time and common sense on its side, National Grid – and hopefully, the DNOs – might just win.