National Grid chief denies lack of substation capacity in Heathrow outage
Image courtesy 123rf
In his first comments since the substation fire at London Heathrow airport on Thursday, National Grid’s chief executive has reportedly claimed the electricity transmission network had enough power to continue feeding the airport through its closure last week.
John Pettigrew told the Financial Times that, while an “unprecedented” blaze knocked out the North Hyde substation, two others serving Heathrow were working throughout.
The substation fire on Thursday caused chaos for London Heathrow Airport, one of Europe’s busiest.
The fire took place at an off-site substation in Hayes, bringing cancellations of over 1,300 flights, reportedly costing the airline industry £60 million ($77.7 million) to £70 million ($90.7 million), says the Guardian, disrupting the journeys of more than 200,000 passengers around the world.
As of Saturday, flights at the airport resumed, with London Heathrow taking to social media platform X, saying they are open and fully operational.
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“There was no lack of capacity from the substations,” said Pettigrew. “Each substation individually can provide enough power to Heathrow.”
On Sunday, a spokesperson for Heathrow said to the Financial Times: “As the National Grid’s chief executive, John Pettigrew, noted, he has never seen a transformer failure like this in his 30 years in the industry. His view confirms that this was an unprecedented incident and that it would not have been possible for Heathrow to operate uninterrupted.”
National Grid owns and operates Britain’s high voltage transmission network, including the substations around Heathrow. SSEN owns the distribution network in the area.
NESO’s investigation
Pettigrew’s comments follow commissioning by the government on Saturday of the UK’s National Energy System Operator (NESO) to review the substation fire and resulting power outage.
NESO, which operates Britain’s electricity grid, is tasked to ‘build a clearer picture of the incident and its circumstances’.
Commenting in a release was UK energy secretary Ed Miliband: “…working with Ofgem, I have today commissioned the National Energy System Operator to carry out an investigation into this specific incident and to understand any wider lessons to be learned on energy resilience for critical national infrastructure, both now and in the future.”
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander added: “This incident caused significant disruption but Heathrow, National Grid, and our emergency services have worked swiftly to get people travelling again.
“Heathrow is a massive airport that uses the energy of a small city, so it’s imperative we identify how this power failure happened and learn from this to ensure a vital piece of national infrastructure remains strong.”
NESO chief executive Fintan Slye said: “We will now work with all relevant stakeholders to understand the lessons that can be learned to improve future resilience of Great Britain’s energy system.”
Added Slye: “NESO will work with other bodies, including Heathrow Airport, to ensure the investigation is comprehensive and thoroughly examines the causes of the incident.”
