This video of a panel debate at the Energy Institute last autumn is very interesting. Chaired by Ian Marchant of SSE, with Steve Holliday of National Grid, Charles Hendry the former energy minister, and lastly Simon Roberts from Bristol's Centre for Sustainable Energy.
I particularly enjoyed the bit at 9.00 when Holliday explalined that consumers are going to be facing a "different price dynamic" and a new world of intermittency. This thought was echoed at 13:00 when Roberts told us that we need to think about what happens in the consumer mind, for example whether they choose to flick a switch as opposed to sitting in the dark for a bit longer. He seemed uncomfortable with the idea that people might be able to have power when they wanted it and seemed also to think that his role was to tell people how to behave.
Also interesting was Charles Hendry's enthusiasm for central planning (22:00). I'm slightly bemused by his idea that a profit seeking business would run down its plant in order to deliver price security to customers. He also made the surprising admission (31:30) that we don't know if the price of renewables is going to come down sufficiently to make them affordable in the longer term.