It’s been a day when power has been front and centre of the UK news agenda.
The first projects from state-owned GB Energy were expected to grab the headlines, including £10m of ‘metro partnerships’ to build clean power across the country. But the story was pushed down the agenda by a fire that has closed London’s Heathrow Airport and impacted 62,000 customers directly, alongside the travel plans of millions around the world.
Fires can happen anytime and anywhere, but quite why an electricity substation blaze close to the airport premises should bring the UK’s leading airport to a halt will be a subject of investigation. It raises questions around back-up power, energy storage and “infrastructure resilience” at times of heightened geopolitical tensions.
Large sites like Heathrow have multiple connections through the distribution network (run by SSE Networks in that area) to the big National Grid Substations.
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