Over the past months I have been getting to E.ON and trying to understand what you actually do - which is clearly a huge amount.
I learned the biggest task for an energy provider seems to be managing and controlling the flow of energy. I realised that it’s almost more of a job managing the power than creating it in the first place. Generating it, from whichever source it may be, is one thing, but another consideration is having continuity of that supply so that when there is a big need for electricity very quickly there are the reserves there to provide it. We never worry whether the electricity will be there when we switch on the lights, or boil our kettle. We have all grown to be virtually unable to live without electricity - as I’m writing this right now I am sitting at home on my laptop and I wasn’t worrying this morning that there would be no power available at the plug socket! We have no big batteries in the UK which can store up the energy we don’t use – but there would be a few people complaining if there wasn’t enough!
It is one big puzzle from what I can see, there has to be a certain amount of prediction involved in how many people boil their kettles in the ad break during Coronation Street! If the weather is cold, and there’s an important football match on TV – then the demand for energy is going to be pretty high!
So it has already been an interesting journey and a staggering one. I have found myself truly amazed at the complexity of it and started asking so many questions about what comes from where and when! It just tells me that there is so much to find out and the more I learn, the more there is to learn – but then life is about a voyage of discovery…
