Section:GDN 1N PaGe:11 Edition Date:190812 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 11/8/2019 15:49 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Monday 12 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •
11Haroon SiddiqueThe government has called an inquiry
into the power cut on Friday that left
people stuck in trains for up to nine
hours and almost a million people in
England and Wales without electricity.
The outage, the biggest in a decade,
caused chaos during the evening rush
hour, plunging Newcastle airport into
darkness and causing gridlock in some
areas as traffi c lights stopped working.
Describing the disruption as
“enormous”, the business secretary,
Andrea Leadsom, said: “National Grid
must urgently review and report to
Ofgem. I will also be commissioning
the government’s energy emergencies
executive committee to consider the
incident.”
The energy watchdog, Ofgem, had
already demanded an “urgent detailed
report” from National Grid and threat-
ened enforcement action.
National Grid, which runs the elec-
tricity transmission system, blamedthe cut on a “rare and unusual” simul-
taneous loss of two large generators:
Little Barford gas-fi red power station,
in Bedfordshire, and then Hornsea
windfarm, off the coast of Yorkshire.
A back up generator for outpatient
areas at Ipswich hospital did not work
as expected, but East Suff olk and
North Essex NHS foundation trust
said “patients were kept safe and cared
for throughout” the 15-minute period
before power was restored.
A bout 300,000 UK Power Networks
customers were aff ected in London
and south-east England, a spokes-
woman said, and Western Power
Distribution said about 500,
people were aff ected in the Midlands,
south-west England and Wales , with
power restored shortly after 6pm.
Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow
energy secretary, said National Grid,
which in May posted £1.8bn in profi ts,
must urgently provide a full account
of what went wrong and why. “Dis-
ruption on this scale is unacceptable. ”
National Grid welcomed the gov-
ernment inquiry. It said the Electricity
System Operator , a separate business
responsible for balancing supply and
demand, had also launched an inquiry.Minister orders
National Grid to
review cause of
power outage
1m
The estimated number of people
across England and Wales who were
left without electricity on FridayРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS