Janet Wood, Editor, New Power

The FT’s recent conference on digital energy had the same split that often arises when we talk about ­digital. Some people speak about doing very much the same things as ever – surveying power lines, reading meters – but doing them remotely, and doing them better, cheaper, faster. From a technical point of view that’s fairly unproblematic. And in fact you often hear that what seems like a technological breakthrough in one industry – remote condition monitoring, say, or time of use tariffs – is already in regular use in another.