STORY: A hearth that shut Heathrow Airport in March, stranding 1000’s of passengers, was brought on by Nationwide Grid’s failure to keep up an electrical energy substation.
That is in response to an official report launched Wednesday.
The closure of Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe, price airways tens of hundreds of thousands of kilos.
It additionally raised questions concerning the resilience of Britain’s infrastructure.
The report follows a overview of the incident on March 21 by the Nationwide Vitality System Operator.
It manages the electrical energy community and was separated from Nationwide Grid final yr.
Because of the report, Britain’s vitality regulator Ofgem launched an enforcement investigation.
It mentioned its overview had seen proof {that a} “catastrophic failure” on one of many transformer’s excessive voltage bushings on the substation precipitated the transformer to catch fireplace.
And that Nationwide Grid controls in place weren’t efficient.
A Nationwide Grid spokesperson mentioned that the corporate had a complete asset inspection and upkeep programme in place.
And that it had taken additional motion for the reason that fireplace.
Ofgem plans to overview whether or not Nationwide Grid had complied with the related laws and licence circumstances.
In addition to an unbiased audit to overview whether or not the failings had been a one-off or systemic.
