When lightning struck part of Britain’s national electricity grid near Bedford shortly before 5pm on Friday last week, it should have been a routine event. Lightning strikes hit the grid more than 1,000 times every year, usually with no discernible impact. Yet on this occasion it triggered an unexpected chain of events that less than two minutes later had resulted in power being cut to more than a million homes around Britain and chaos being unleashed on the rail networks. Passengers spent hours trapped on immobile trains, while in Ipswich part of a hospital ended up in the dark. The blackout, the most serious in Britain in more than a decade, has raised searching questions for National Grid, the FTSE 100 company that is entrusted with keeping the lights on, as well as for other organisations responsible for Britain’s energy and transport infrastructure. National Grid yesterday submitted a preliminary technical report to Ofgem, the regulator, early details of which were obtained by The Times. Here, we document what is thought to have happened and the key questions that will need to be answered.
Times 17th Aug 2019 read more »
A million homes were left without power, while train networks were paralysed, in the evening rush hour on Friday last week. These were cumulatively Britain’s worst blackouts in more than a decade, removing about 5 per cent of the country’s power supplies. National Grid is the company responsible for keeping power supplies working and it failed in its task. It submitted an interim report yesterday to Ofgem, the energy regulator, which sought to spread the blame. It is probably true that there was no single factor responsible for the power outage. A full report, to be published in three months’ time, will go into greater detail. Nor is there any responsible economic case, as Labour proposes, for nationalising the National Grid. Yet it is vital that the regulator and the government explain how an initial power cut escalated into chaos and disruption. The utility sector is already under sustained criticism for its standards of service and pricing. Failure to answer reasonable criticisms is only going to fuel suspicion about a market economy’s ability to regulate natural monopolies and provide superficial plausibility to fanciful schemes of socialist economics.
Times 17th Aug 2019 read more »
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