Simple lessons for the energy industry and us researchers - simply put, if customers don't get it, you've got a problem; and you'll be eating humble pie.

At a time when we looking ahead to the smart meters and smart grids time of day metering and demand side management, perhaps British Gas' acknowledgement (see BBC article) that they "had not made it easy for customers" in their pricing is a salutory lesson - we had better put the people at the centre of the problem and work back to the engineering.

What we need is more pricing plan information presented like this gem (originally) from confused.com: