There’s a new game that made it onto internet, Wordle. Somewhat similar to Mastermind, your aim is to guess a five letter word. After each guess, you are told which letters you got right (highlighted green), which letters you got right albeit in the wrong places (highlighted yellow), and which…

For the last few years, I’ve written a post describing the books I’ve read in the previous year (see 2020, 2019, 2018). This serves to help me remember what I’ve read, and occasionally as inspiration to friends that might be looking for something to read. 2021 has been a bit…

A proposal that would help UK domestic power and gas consumers manage their long-term exposure to price uncertainty. Background Electricity and gas wholesale prices experience massive volatility in the UK. These prices are primarily driven by global gas markets, and are largely out of the control of energy retailers. Over…

This post offers some thoughts on why electricity prices in Great Britain are so high, with a few reflections about what should be done about it. I signed up back in late 2018 with Octopus Energy’s Agile tariff, which reflects the half hourly wholesale prices. My reason for signing up…

It is now widely recognised that we need to reduce emissions. However, there are many ways to do this, and lots of uncertainty in the decisions to be made. Most governments handle this by letting the private markets innovate, taking risk in search of profit. In practice, this approach is…

Barely a week goes by without a tweet calling for a data catalogue for the UK’s energy data. 20 years working in the energy industry, having experienced a number of similar initiatives attempting to catalogue the data held by my own employers, mean that my response to these latest calls…

Octopus Energy offers UK domestic customers like me a tariff, Agile, that varies each half hour based on the wholesale electricity price. I am a member of a Facebook group and a forum that regularly discuss this tariff, and I have found it fascinating watching the reaction to December 2020…

Background In the UK, the majority of domestic electricity customers are on a standard variable tariffs: a contract which the customer can leave any time, with a single price for electricity used any time of day, which the utility can increase with 30 days notice. A common variant of this is…

At the end of each of the last few years, I’ve written a blog post listing the books that I’ve read or listened to over the year (see my 2019 and 2018 lists). I find it a useful way of reminding myself what I’ve read, and of recognising and recommending…