Gemma Riley, one of our Energy Managers, explains what she gets most excited about, how trading works for customers in our size range and what a gas sniffer does!

Gemma, you’ve worked with the company for a while now. What has been the biggest change for you having come to us from a surveying firm and specialising in wayleaves and easements?

Trading. Since I began here, I have been impressed by how much trading NFU Energy does on behalf of its customer mix. I started here at the company in a time where the energy markets had just begun to go wild, so trading for both import and export was, and still is, keeping us busy. I was thrown into it which I thoroughly enjoyed. As we couldn’t predict where the markets were going, we had to pay close attention to the movement of prices daily and keep ears and eyes on any influencing factors that played a part in any increase or decrease in prices of energy. For example, the war in Ukraine and the gas explosion in America both had heavy consequences on the prices of energy, leaving suppliers unable to provide contract quotes with prices sky rocketing.

So, how does trading work?

With long term trading, some customers have hedging plans that we try to stick to. So, they will trade so much ahead in certain months at certain times of year. Other customers like to watch the market more closely and trade when they feel it’s beneficial to their business. We also watch the market very closely with these customers in mind and update them on prices regularly so they can make decisions on whether best to trade.

Market dependent, we can spend a good amount of time collecting prices and trading for customers, especially with a gas import and electric export spread for our CHP customer.  When gas prices are low like they have been and the electric peak weekday sell price is really high, customers can make an excellent profit just by turning on their Combined Heat and Power engines if they buy the gas and sell electric in advance. Recent trades have seen over £8 million worth of profit from these gas import and electric peak week-day sell trades.  

You mentioned recently about a tour of two AD plants with gas to grid capability. Can you tell me a little more about their set-up?

Not far from our offices in Stoneleigh is a customer of ours who has two AD plants and also the capability to take the gas off, upgrade it and inject it into the grid.

I learnt that gas has to be odorised before its pumped back into the grid whilst the owner showed me around the site, and he explained that the correct levels need to be used as it is super, super strong. 'Sniffers' or ‘gas odour assessors’, are used to smell the gas and make sure there is enough odorant in there. In a process known as ‘stenching’ sulphur compounds are added to the natural gas (both odourless and colourless), so that any leaks can be easily detected.

AD gas-to-grid sites use numerous “sniffers” who judge odorant level in the natural gas product. Gas sniffers can only work for certain periods of time to give their nose a rest or retire it altogether! If they add too much it can stink the place out meaning people will needlessly think there is a gas leak so it’s a very fine line of adding too much or too little.

Sometimes things can go wrong for our customers and their energy plans. Can you tell us about a time when you’ve saved the day for one of our customers?

We were made aware at the beginning of August of an issue where one of our energy producing clients had not received payment from the energy company they were suppling to for several months. This accounted for both their export tariff and Feed-in Tariff payments. We put the pressure on to the energy company and raised a complaint, chasing the outcome daily – the money was in the bank of our customer within 4 weeks of us being made aware of the issue.

And finally, what do you see as being the future here at NFU Energy?

Renewable energy is still up and coming with more people installing solar PV etc. and the switch over to electric cars on the horizon. Installing EV charging points, innovation in farming, managing energy costs and contracts for producing energy to supply the grid or private wires are all becoming more commonplace and these are things our company can assist the sector in. Gas to grid and carbon capture will also be more prevalent in the coming years as farmers try to utilise every aspect of renewables as we progress to net zero.

If you have any questions for Gemma or would like to find out how you could benefit from anything mentioned above please get in touch on 024 7669 6512.