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July 16, 2007

What's a weather window?

Disconnector was inspired by pictures of a second record-breaking wind turbine being barged out to join its fellow at the Talisman field, printed in last week's Utility Week.
The first turbine has been braving the seas off the northwest coast for a year waiting for its twin. But Talisman Energy (UK) says the second turbine did not "miss the weather window" when the first turbine was shipped to site, as was suggested in the story.
Instead, the company says, "the weather closed in and prevented the sail out/installation in the time available".
Glad that's cleared up.

July 25, 2007

Good advice don't come cheap

It is a truth universally acknow­ledged that the only people that come up smelling of roses when there is debacle such as British Energy’s near collapse are the lawyers and accountants.
The government, in the shape of the then Department of Trade and Industry, spent more than £29 million on, ahem, advisers’ fees during restructuring of the stricken generator, plus £2.5 million on its own administrative costs. Those figures come from the latest report by the Commons Public Accounts Committee.
The great man’s maths puts that at £31.5 million. Subsequently, some £16.5 million was recovered from British Energy.
So the total damage to the public purse (i.e. your pocket and Disconnector’s) is a cool £15 million. That’s a significant amount of trousering by m’learn’d friends and the bean-counters.
Of course, there was a time when the “experts” talked about nuclear power as being too cheap to meter.
Yeah, right!