Smaller energy suppliers won’t have to keep as much money in the bank when they buy electricity from Big Six generators, under new proposals from Ofgem.

New rules set by the energy regulator are meant to give smaller suppliers a bigger toe-hold in the retail market.

Up until now the larger firms have demanded large “cash collateral requirements” from their smaller rivals, according to a green energy supplier which was founded ten years ago.

Last year its chief executive Juliet Davenport trumpeted the role of the so-called Challenger Seven suppliers snapping at the heels of the UK’s biggest energy companies.

Now firms like hers are being given a helping hand by Ofgem’s new rules. She told ELN: “Generally we welcome it, anything which helps the market towards more liquidity and for other suppliers to get access.”

Ed Gill, Head of Public Affairs at Good Energy added now that firms like his don’t need to have such large reserves, it will free up cash to invest in new projects.

He said: “Going forward the big suppliers when in conversation about buying power, they’ll have to judge suppliers on their own merit. More industry suppliers will be judged on a case by case basis.”

If a small supplier runs power projects already this may make them seem less of a “risk”, he suggested: “If they’re viewed as having generator assets already, for example a small power station, the requirement they put on you for reserves, cash in the bank, may be lower.”

He welcomed the news Ofgem will “monitor and enforce that” as it means suppliers will “get a fairer chance to buy energy”.

ELN reporter Vicky Ellis talks to Energy Secretary Ed Davey MP about community owned energy projects and gauges his reaction to the 2013 Government decarbonisation target vote.

It takes real guts (or perhaps a touch of March Hare madness) to stand in front of a room full of people doing something you’re utterly opposed to and tell them they’re wrong.

That was exactly the scene when Greenpeace’s Doug Parr told around 100 shale gas experts, explorers and investors their industry posed a “problem” and they should leave the stuff in the ground.

He was speaking at an unconventional shale gas and oil conference earlier this week in a panel discussion unfortunately reduced to one, which essentially gave him free reign to hold forth.

It was a bit like going into a lions’ den and telling the big cats to stop hunting, or running face first into a swarm of mozzies demanding they leave off biting immediately.

I thought he was going to get, er, mullered, a tasty snack before feeding time at the zoo.

Except… He didn’t.

Credit to the shale gas guys and girls, they were very tolerant – even interested – towards this green preacher among the “dirty heathens”.

There were titters as a suited campaigner (rumoured to be on the shale gas payroll) queried Doug’s argument against extracting more gas, quipping, “What alternatives are there – I suppose we can’t use whale oil”? A grisly joke, almost too bizarre for words.

But on the whole I’ve not seen a spectacle like it – nothing like the frenzied, carnivalesque protests I’ve covered where revellers yelled and danced their distaste for fossil fuels outside energy conferences, all speakers and attendees kept blissfully unaware by security guards and police. And nowhere near as snide and nasty as the mud-slinging you sometimes get in the press.

It’s a credit to those who were there that an open dialogue was allowed. polarised views either way may not be to your liking but it’s great to have them aired.

Bring on the debate: it’s the only way forward.

You go on holiday to relax, unwind and crucially, forget about work for a few blissful days in the sun. But I should have known better – I can never switch off from energy.

Arriving late at night to the small, bustling town of Fethiye on the southern coast of Turkey last week, it was only when the dawn came that I saw them: hundreds, even thousands of solar panels.

Gazing from the hillside view of my apartment, virtually every building or block of flats below (apart from the dozen or so silver-roofed mosques) was crowned by the somewhat ugly combo of a solar panel and a big metal drum or two.

It was as if a plague of square-eyed insects had descended on the town. I was intrigued. Back in Britain, despite the originally generous solar power Feed-in Tariff which the Government offers people to get solar panels, they are still a relative rarity. Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong places but I’ve never seen a whole town adorned by the things.

While I looked on, one man even risked a several-story-high plunge by ascending his red tiled rooftop to paint it white – presumably so it reflected more of the sun’s rays towards the device. There were clearly different brands competing for customers, going by the variety of names printed on the water drums.

It makes sense in a place where electricity prices are much higher, relatively speaking, when compared with average incomes. Turkish electricity prices are certainly lower than the UK’s while gas prices are around half as much, according to Eurostat. But as for income, the EU fact body’s most recent stats for Turkey (2006) show the median net income was 2,372 euros. The UK’s for that year was 19,403 euros.

Quizzing a burly but friendly taxi driver later that week, I wondered whether it was a government scheme which had seen so many people plump for ‘Solar Enerji’.

But no, it was the people who wanted cheaper water heating, he told me: “It’s free hot water. It would be crazy not to.”

From the sounds of it the powers that be actively prevent people from using solar power for electricity.

“We can only use them for hot water,” he said dismissively, suggesting the authorities want to keep cash flowing in from electricity prices, throwing in: “This Government sucks.”

Whether or not that’s the Turkish Government’s official line on solar power, it certainly puts the UK’s much-maligned energy officials into perspective. It seems the Turkish delight in solar panels stretches only as far as they are allowed to.

Can driving trains more efficiently save both money and energy? Vicky Ellis investigates.

Today is our third birthday! Hooray I hear you cry!

Yes we feel that way too. The past year has been a great one for us and the success of our first conference, Energy Live 2012 propelled us a long way.

To have such auspicious speakers as Ed Davey and the bosses of Big 6 suppliers as well as Angela Knight and many others addressing our conference showed that we are reaching the influencers in this sector.

But it wouldn’t have been anything without our audience made up of you our dear readers. Many thanks to you all, for coming to our conference and most recently supporting The Energy Live Consultancy Awards (TELCA), our first foray into an awards programme.

We also won the Best Journalism prize at the Scottish Green Energy Awards in December and have now firmly established ourselves as a trusted Google news site.

We aim to continue to build on our growing reputation as the leading independent publishers covering UK energy.

First up of course, we have TELCA night on June 27th. This week we announced the shortlist of nominated consultancies and already there is a great buzz of anticipation ahead of the final judging. Best of luck to all who got through. We hope you’ll really enjoy the night and it’s just the first of many big things we have planned over the coming year.

By our next birthday we will have changed this website so get prepared for a new look and plenty of new features including a chance for you to post your events and news directly to the site. We will bring you more content and more learning as we know from feedback many of you would like that service.

This November 7th we will also be staging Energy Live 2013 at the prestigious London Film Museum in Covent Garden and I am delighted to announce that Ed Davey will once again be giving a headline speech and answering your questions. This year the event will be very different and very exclusive with only 400 places, so once we launch the conference website, make sure you register for your place as they will go fast!

And of course more than anything we will be bringing you the news. Vicky and Priyanka have done a stirling job this past year and our brand of comprehensive but clear, digestible journalism has struck a chord with many of you.

Just this week we broke the exclusive story about smart meter roll back. We will endeavour to do more of that, breaking stories, bringing you fantastic high quality TV reports and features, blogs and of course holding those in power to account.

All of this we will do, covering all views from the world of energy.  We are independent, we make no judgement calls and we listen to all views. We want to grow even more this year and that depends on you, tell us what you want, send us stories and call our newsdesk.

If you are an energy manager, buyer, supplier, energy campaigner, academic, consultant or simply just interested in energy I hope you will continue to turn to ELN to keep you informed.

Thanks from all the ELN team for supporting us and we promise to keep bringing you the news that matters.

You finally get home after a long day’s slog, gratefully slump in the sofa with a cup of tea and put your feet up for a few blissful moments.

The television crackles to life sinisterly: “This is Big Brother calling, are you watching?” You spill your hot tea in shock – oh no, you think, what have you done this time.

An angry face on the TV screen screeches, “You left the bedroom lights on all day! That’s an extra ten pounds of tax for you. Don’t do it again or we’ll cut the hot water off halfway through your morning shower.”

Unlikely? Perhaps…perhaps not…Over the weekend the tabloids railed with headlines packed with Big Brother (Orwell’s version, not the cheap reality TV show) hysteria at the National Grid’s plans to hook up to British fridges and freezers, with power to turn them off when the grid is overloaded.

Is that an outrageous imposition on our privacy, a breach of personal space? Ultimate big corporation/state control?

Well how bad is it? We already voluntarily share huge amounts of personal information about ourselves online, whether it’s our social indiscretions on Facebook or bank details and buying habits through email accounts and shopping sites. We let other firms do things automatically on our behalf, like paying bills with direct debit or magazine and TV subscriptions.

So what’s wrong with handing over a tiny bit of control over something which won’t significantly affect us?

This fear is a precursor of concerns over the safety of our energy data when the UK’s 14 million homes and businesses get smart meters by 2019. Perhaps the idea of someone or some machine having a hand in our homes is a step too far for us too deal with.

In reality, the National Grid says it will only ever turn off the appliances it will be connected to for a matter of seconds and this process will be automated. In my humble opinion, what’s the big deal? As long as we make sure there’s no way for this power to be abused, conceding the National Grid a teensy bit of control is only going to benefit us – cutting the country’s energy use and avoiding the need for more big power stations. We’re not exactly likely to have a Machiavellian energy manager sadistically tampering with the homes of colleagues or enemies who have annoyed them.

No matter how much I bet that idea appeals to the budding energy dictators who read ELN…

Vicky Ellis visits the depths of London’s sewer system to find out how fat that’s clogging the sewers is being turned into a power source by Thames Water.

It could keep on going for years but this coal plant has been forced to close. ELN reporter Vicky Ellis visits Kingsnorth on the east coast of England to find out why – and what hope there might be for the UK’s future energy supply.

Most people will never get the chance to do it but stepping foot inside the empty control room of a condemned power station is a strange experience. Like walking onto the film set of a Hollywood flick you’ve seen a hundred times – except this place has been used for real, for decades.

Standing in Kingsnorth Power Station’s control room last week, my mouth actually dropped open with the weirdness of it all. A small knitted monkey sat abandoned on top of one of the powered down computer units, a mascot to watch over the plant when its owner can’t.

What was once the brains behind the beating heart (well, turbines) of a huge coal plant was still, lifeless. The dead screens and unblinking lights on the dashboards, the buttons that will never be pressed again, all seemed quite spooky, industrially supernatural.

It’s a bit of a shock, knowing such a huge building will effectively stand empty, possibly be demolished. That feeling will surely be magnified for the 150-strong workforce who supervised, operated and cleaned Kingsnorth.

Built in the late Sixties and opening in 1970, Kingsnorth was once dual-fired, using both oil and coal but by the time it closed to fall in line with EU rules, all its four turbines were powered by coal.

The future was looking bright up until three years ago with the owner E.ON hoping to convert two coal turbines to operate with Carbon Capture and Storage technology. But in 2010 the supplier ditched the plans citing poor economics. CCS was never going to be an easy, cheap option. Other plans for the site are now unclear.

Which leaves me standing at the spot where up to twelve operators prodded and coaxed a stunning 98% start reliability out of the old beast. Right until the last watt it pumped out just before Christmas, the plant was in tip top condition. Michael Vann, the operations director told me with quiet pride that Kingsnorth could have gone for years while Paul Graham, the man responsible for closing the site said it was the people who made Kingsnorth what it was.

Walking out the building, past the packed up cardboard boxes and empty offices, was both unsettling and touching – and hammered home the idea that decisions at the top really do affect the frontline. The impact of policy on real people, not just statistics, should be remembered, no matter what your energy persuasion.

The monkey may still be there but the power station is now worth peanuts and no one could contradict how sad that is.