A Life in the Day of Maggies

I have been a Nonexec director of the Maggies cancer centre charity for about ten years now and I finally got around to visiting our centre in Swansea. We have about 20 centres around the UK and they are all different and yet all the same. They have all been designed by different architects and therefore look and feel quite different but they all have two things at their heart. Helping people affected by cancer either directly or indirectly and the cup of tea at the kitchen table. They provide an oasis of tranquility offering a range of practical, social and psychological support  and act as a contrast to the hospital institution which is usually right next door.

I was reminded forcefully of the variety of things that happen in any Maggies centre on any given day. When I walked in the place was full as the drop in Tai Chi session had just finished. Conversations were going on around the kitchen table but someone still found the time to welcome me and make me a cup of tea. It then got even busier as the another group finished. I wangled a seat at the kitchen table and chatted to some volunteers and centre users to hear about their stories and the value they get from Maggies.  The best way I can summarise what I heard was that Maggies allows people to get control back of their life and some even  say that the combined experience of cancer followed by  Maggies leaves them in a better place than before they started on a very bumpy journey. 

The centre then quietened down as another session on coping with bereavement started. That allowed some of the staff to engage in more causal conversations. The one that really struck me was the sort of conversation that shouldn't really happen but does at Maggies. It was time for the annual fire inspection;  extinguishers that sort of thing. The obligatory cup of tea was made for the guy and then he opened up. He had lost a lot of family members to cancer and a close relative was currently going through a challenging diagnosis. It was so easy and natural for him to share that and for one of our team to explain more about Maggies and how it could help him and his family. We got our certificate but he got more than he bargained for.

The next conversation involved an emergency dash for tissues so I made my excuses and chatted instead to the benefits adviser who helps people work through the financial implications of their cancer diagnosis but that was then interrupted by someone walking in looking for help and I could see the sag in the shoulders disappearing as questions were answered and pointers given. All this time one of our volunteers was greeting everyone who came in and in a very welcoming and non institutional way found out what they needed. There are no names and no numbers at Maggies, it's all about the individual. When I looked up at this point  I saw three individual conversations going on, one group session was on, as was the kettle. Just another moment in the life of a Maggies centre. 

The three S approach to uncertainty

Life seems to be getting more and more uncertain. We are being warned about a Brexit rollercoaster and the oil price, at least in percentage terms, seems to be doing a good impersonation of an elevator; up one minute, down the next. All this uncertainty makes decision-making complex , especially when they concern long-life assets.

Against this background I have been thinking about the question of energy independence. Whilst, in my opinion, this isn’t necessarily a good goal at the national or even local level in its own right, I do believe that investing to reduce one’s dependence on and exposure to both the volatility of the global energy markets and the resilience of local energy distribution systems is something to be considered.

This is where, I believe, a combination of three Ss comes in: solar, storage and software. The cost of solar panels has come down enormously over the last ten years or so but the economics still depend upon support mechanisms, partly because of the profile of solar production. That problem will always be with us and that is where storage comes in.  Installing a suitably-sized lithium ion battery in the home or office allows much more of the solar power to be used on-site and this significantly improves the economics of the whole installation. The third leg is energy management software that can optimise on-site demand (which could include decisions on when to recharge a plug in an electric vehicle), to match the availability of locally produced or stored electricity. The same software can also be used to decide when electricity should be exported and when imported from the grid, an increasing source of value as we move to time of day pricing. Finally, the same software can work out when the stored energy can be used to provide support services such as frequency response to the local grid or through aggregation to the national grid. It really is the combination of the three that makes all this work.

Investing in solar, storage and software may not mean complete energy independence but it will certainly reduce exposure to energy uncertainty and will be an increasingly good investment in its own right. We are seeing commercial offerings starting to emerge in this space and I’m sure there will be more to come.