 "£70mn loss, 200,000 stranded: UK national grid chief says Heathrow could’ve stayed open")
The Chief Executive of National Grid, John Pettigrew, has claimed that the Heathrow Airport had enough power from other substations to remain open during the Friday fire incident. Speaking for the first time since the blaze forced the North Hyde substation to close, Pettigrew said that two other substations were fully functional at the time of the blaze.
“There was no lack of capacity from the substations,” the National Grid chief told the Financial Times on Sunday. “Each substation individually can provide enough power to Heathrow," he added. When asked about the matter, Heidi Alexander, the transport secretary on Monday clarified that the problem was wider than just the amount of power that was available.
She noted that the need to temporarily close the airport was set out to her by its chief executive. “He explained to me that there were significant problems in terminals two and four, and given that they had to turn everything off and reboot all the systems, that was their judgment as to why they said that they would close the airport until midnight on Friday night,” she told Sky News. “In the event, they were able to get power back up, and they did have planes landing from about 4 pm on Friday," she added.
Investigation into the airport closure underway
Alexander noted that there were also backup generators at the airport but they were “designed to protect the critical systems within the airport, and not to power the entire airport”. Meanwhile, the government has opened an investigation into the closure of the airport, which returned to normal business on Sunday.
As per the authorities, the incident might have cost the airline industry £60m to £70m and disrupted the journeys of more than 200,000 passengers around the world. While speaking on the matter, Ed Miliband the energy secretary, said the government was “determined to properly understand what happened and what lessons need to be learned”, in regard to the incident at Heathrow and the UK’s “energy resilience for critical national infrastructure”.
In the Financial Times interview, Pettigrew said two substations were always available for the distribution network companies and Heathrow to take power. However, he maintained that it was a “question for Heathrow” as to why it took the action it did. “Losing a substation is a unique event – but there were two others available,” he said. “So that is a level of resilience," he added.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsIn response to Pettigrew’s assertion, a Heathrow spokesperson said: “As the National Grid’s chief executive 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."
“Hundreds of critical systems across the airport were required to be safely powered down and then safely and systematically rebooted. Given Heathrow’s size and operational complexity, safely restarting operations after a disruption of this magnitude was a significant challenge," he added. It is yet to be determined who is at fault for making the airport shutdown.
With inputs from agencies.
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