Net Work October 2021

The new UKCA symbol

This month’s Net Work column introduces the new UKCA approval mark for those who have not seen it before. It’s the UK answer to the EU’s CE mark and is already starting to appear on new consumer goods. There is more information on the new UKCA at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/using-the-ukca-marking.

For anyone who’s interested, the official (English) website of the European Union is https://ec.europa.eu/info/index_en which highlights the work of its 55 Departments: bedtime reading it is not!  With masks in mind, one can only marvel at 48 pages of EU PPE legislation at https://tinyurl.com/2pt2trnd.

I also point out the risk from fake or phony CE- marked equipment coming in from Asia. Critical are the separation between the two letters (see https://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/ce-marking_en) and the perfectly circular style of the font (above, left – see how they intersect on the genuine symbol – right, is a fake version).

Uncertain supplies

Talking about smart meters again, with projects like Gazprom’s Nordstream2 (see the Gazprom website https://www.gazprom.com/projects/nord-stream2/), the future of power transmission has never been less certain.  Control of much of the European mainland’s gas supplies has been allowed to fall into Russian hands. Russia is already said to be ‘working to rule’ and delivering (only) the contracted amount of gas to Europe.  Winter 2021 promises to be a very challenging acid test of the robustness of European gas supplies and stocks.

Trials are underway by the consortium H21.green (https://h21.green) to build a hydrogen gas ‘microgrid’ including blending hydrogen with natural gas, with a test site in Cumbria having three demonstration houses powered by hydrogen. More details on the YouTube video at https://youtu.be/GNIGJzbERg4