The Observer - 11.08.2019

• The Observer
  16 11.08.19 News

Rail passengers have endured a sec-

ond day of disruption, this time

caused by severe winds and fl ooding

rather than power outages.

After travellers recovered from

huge delays of up to 12 hours on

Friday following the National Grid

failure, widespread chaos was

yesterday reported throughout the

national rail network.

The most high-profi le victim was

the West Coast Main Line between

Scotland and England, closed after

a foot of water submerged tracks

between Carlisle and Lockerbie.

Earlier, Network Rail imposed

speed restrictions on many routes,

particularly in coastal areas, where

wind speeds hit 60mph and several

uprooted trees had blocked lines.

In central London, gusts felled a

massive tree in Russell Square, block-

ing a road and diverting a number of

bus routes.

Weather warnings were issued

for much of the UK with forecasts

of thunderstorms in Scotland and

Northern Ireland and strong winds

across Wales and most of England.

As the latest disruption unfolded,

travellers stranded in trains outside

London on Friday for more than eight

Winds and

fl oods cause

second day

of travel woes

‘Why did this happen now?’ National Grid

faces call for answers over blackout chaos

Former infrastructure

tsar says Friday

night’s cuts to supply

should not have led to

paralysis across UK’s

transport system

system close to 50Hz to keep it sta-

ble. But industry sources said that,

the frequency had previously fallen

to dangerously low levels three times

in the last 12 weeks.

The company said : “Following the

event, the other generators on the

network responded to the loss by

increasing their output as expected.

However, due to the scale of the gen-

eration losses this was not suffi cient,

and to protect the network and ensure

that restoration to normal operation

could be completed as quickly as pos-

sible, a backup protection system was

triggered which disconnects selected

demand across GB.”

How this backup system func-

tioned is now expected to form part

of the investigation into what went

wrong on Friday.

The failure of the two power sta-

tions in 2008, and the resulting fl uc-

tuation in energy frequency on the

grid, caused some smaller generators

• of which there are around 50,
  across the UK – to detect the distur-
  bance and shut down in a safety oper-
  ation that the energy industry refers
  to as “loss of mains protection”.
  A National Grid presentation in
  March suggested the system might be
  “too sensitive,” causing smaller gener-
  ators to shut down prematurely when
  disturbances were detected, leading
  to blackouts. In a July 2018 presenta-
  tion, the National Grid claimed such
  widespread shutdowns were a risk
  that occured once every 12 years.
  The company’s director of oper-
  ations, Duncan Burt, said its safety
  protection systems had worked well
  to keep the grid safe.
  But he conceded that the industry
  needed to examine whether it was set
  up correctly to have “minimal impact”
  on people’s daily lives.

Travellers stuck at

King’s Cross station,

London, on Friday

after the outage.

Flooding

between Carlisle

and Lockerbie

yesterday caused

the closure of the

west coast main

line. PA

hours spoke of their frustration. At

King’s Cross station, closed on Friday

evening to avoid overcrowding, pas-

sengers exchanged horror stories

from the day before.

Joshua Carr, a freelance stage man-

ager, told the Observer he had been

trapped on a train from Edinburgh to

King’s Cross for nine “painful” hours.

“We didn’t move for three hours and

didn’t arrive until 1:45am ,” he said.

A freelance journalist travelling

to London from Scotland described

being stuck for more than 12 hours

after it left Edinburgh.

In a series of tweets, Dayna

McAlpine said her London North

Eastern Railway (LNER) train, sta-

tionary for hours outside King’s

Cross, quickly ran out of provisions.

“We ran out of food around 7pm –

parents were going up and down the

train carriages looking for food for

their children,” she said.

As rail bosses struggled to get the

network running, a watchdog urged

rail passengers left stranded by the

disruption to claim compensation.

David Sidebottom, director of

independent transport user watch-

dog, Transport Focus , said: “Any

passengers who heeded advice not

to travel should claim delay-repay

compensation in order to get their

money back, including those using a

season ticket.”

Across most of the country, the

weather is expected to be more settled

today with showers and some patches

of sunshine breaking through.

National Grid must urgently explain
why it failed to prioritise the supply
of electricity to key parts of Britain
during Friday’s blackouts, the gov-
ernment’s former infrastructure tsar
has said.
The demand by Lord Adonis , for-
mer chair of the government’s
National Infrastructure Commission ,
came as it emerged that the company
had been concerned for more than a
year about how its system responded
to power shortages.
Almost one million people in
England and Wales lost electricity
on Friday after the failure of a gas-
fi red power station in Bedfordshire
and several units at an offshore wind-
farm in the Humber.
The result was chaos. Traffi c lights
stopped working, and key hubs
including Newcastle airport and
Ipswich hospital were hit. There was
major disruption to the country’s rail-
ways and London underground dur-
ing the busy Friday night commute.
“Why did this happen now?” Adonis
asked. “This is the middle of August,
not the end of November. Why were
key transport installations affected
when they should have been pro-
tected from any but the most extreme
power breakdowns? National Grid
need to provide answers .”
The failure of the two generators
saw a loss of 5% of the grid’s electric-
ity – some 1.4 gigawatts. This was
less than the 1.8 gigawatts lost in
2008 when two different generators
failed. Then, about 500,000 people
lost power, but major infrastructure
systems were unaffected.
“This is a big wake-up call for
National Grid,” Adonis said. “Their
resilience is below par. They need to
improve their processes for ensuring
the resilience of national transport
and medical installations .”
The failure of the two generators
on Friday caused a frequency drop
in the electricity system which, while
sizable, should not have troubled it
unduly, according to experts.
“The frequency went down to less
than 49Hz, so certain parts of the net-
work started to disconnect automat-
ically, causing the power cuts until
the system came back into balance
and the frequency stabilised,” said
Phil Hewitt, a director at energy con-
sultancy EnAppSys. “We would have
expected the system to cope with this
size of loss of generation but the dou-
ble hit may have destabilised it.”
National Grid has to maintain the

Jamie Doward

& Jillian Ambrose

Josh Sandiford

& Mark Townsend

ON OTHER PAGES

Th e blackout illuminated the brittle

nature of our infrastructure

Observer Comment, page 42

ПОДГОТОВИЛА

ГРУППА

"What's News"

VK.COM/WSNWS