ALTHOUGH he took up two columns in the Review,?David Norman never got round to actually answering the point.

If, when solar energy is perfected, it will not be the answer to bypassing utility companies and providing free electricity, what will be? It may be solar panels require a means whereby power from the sun be magnified to increase efficiency, and batteries improved for overnight operation. In future these questions will have to be answered, and preferably before electricity and gas costs, which are always rising, rocket out of control.

That is why I was asking for our scientists to concentrate on improving the efficiency of solar panels for the benefit of us all. Solar power is the only source of energy which could conceivably be delivered without utility companies. The points which he did raise in those two columns, however, were most interesting and I appreciate them.

The alternative is the system we have today in which different sources of energy are all pumped into our homes and into industry by utility companies who charge the earth and never appear to reduce their prices even when their costs come down. Perhaps the utility companies could be taken over by the Government, not as a nationalised industry as they used to be whereby we paid for them as customers, and again as taxpayers, but as a department of the Government so we paid them once only, as taxpayers. If that were to be too impractical or expensive, then at least the Government should take the necessary action to keep their prices under control.

– Anthony Reeve, Oak Way, Littledean.