The Director General of National GRID insisted that the electricity transmission network remained capable of feeding enough energy for Heathrow throughout the airport closure last week, while the anger of airlines concerning the decision to close for almost 24 hours increased.
In his first comments since the fire Thursday evening, John Pettigrew told Financial Times that if an unprecedented fire had knocked out the North Hyde base, two others in the Heathrow service worked throughout the incident.
“There was no shortage of ability to stations,” he said. “Each sub-station individually can provide enough power to Heathrow.”
Heathrow closed almost everything on Friday after the fire, causing a disturbance that should cost the airlines for tens of millions of pounds. More than 1,300 flights have been canceled, affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers.
The airport said that, although it is able to perform full operations with power from only two substations, it had to “reconfigure” its internal electrical networks to make the change in complete safety.
Heathrow Managing Director Thomas Woldbye said the airport was also said to be safely restarting thousands of its systems – from luggage belts to air bridges.
He seemed to transfer a certain blame to the energy industry when he told BBC that Heathrow would assess if he needed “a different level of resilience if we cannot trust that the grid around us works as it should”.
But Pettigrew said: “Two substations were still available for distribution network companies and Heathrow to take power.” He added that it was a “question for Heathrow” to explain why it had taken the action she had done.
“Losing a substation is a unique event-but there were two others,” he said. “It is therefore a level of resilience.”
On Sunday, a Heathrow spokesman said: “As the director general of the national grid noted, John Pettigrew, he has never seen a failure of transformer like this during his 30 years in the industry.
National GRID has and operates the British high-voltage transmission network, including the deposits around Heathrow, where electricity is introduced into low-voltage distribution networks, then houses and business. SSEN has the distribution network in the region.
As they started to recover their operations this weekend, the airlines began to question the duration of the closure and if some terminals could have reopened earlier.
A senior executive said the airlines had “pushed and pushed” Heathrow to reopen.
“It is not clear why Heathrow made the decision so early to close the airport for the whole day … It is clear that the flights to Terminal 5 could have been activated early Friday afternoon,” they said.
Another senior executive said that “many” airlines expected the airport to reappear faster, although they have conceded that its management had been faced with “difficult” decisions.
A third agreed that there were questions about the question of whether all the terminals should have closed for so long.
Heathrow spokesperson said on Sunday evening, “In accordance with our airline partners, our goal was to reopen as soon as possible and practically possible after the fire …
WoldBye said Heathrow reopened as quickly as possible safely, and the airport had faced a “major” and “unprecedented” event.
The ministers ordered an investigation into the incident and, the Sunday chancellor Rachel Reeves, said that the disturbances highlighted the need for a new capacity of the airport in London, including a third track in Heathrow.
The closure should cost the air transport industry of around 60 million pounds Sterling at 70 million pounds Sterling, according to Andrew Light, consultant and former senior executive at British Airways.
Airlines do not have to pay direct compensation to customers, but must cover hotel invoices and other disruption costs. Heathrow said he was not responsible for the costs of airlines.
Nigel Wicking, Managing Director of Heathrow AOC, who represents the airlines that use the airport, said: “We are already paying enough for Heathrow services, we cannot pay where there is a lack of resilience and failure of this nature, whether heathrow or their suppliers.”
Pettigrew said that the fire of the North Hyde basement – which, according to the firefighters, said that it had set fire 25,000 liters of cooling oil – was so fierce that it damaged the three transformers on the site, one of which is there to save and further from the other two.
He added that the cause of the fire was not yet known because it is still too hot for a complete forensic work, with an excluded third-party involvement. Police against terrorism inquiry, but there were no signs of unfair play.
“I do not remember a transformer who failed like this during my 30th and more in industry,” said Pettigrew.
When asked why the site, built in the 1960s, was designed in a way that it was possible that the three transformers were knocked out by a single fire, he said: “You must build substations in the available space, and obviously you do everything you can to mitigate the risks.
“But this is something that clearly I think that an investigation will examine a little further.”
The fire of the sub-station comes at a time of increased concern about the risk of damage to the national critical infrastructures of the United Kingdom given the war of Russia against Ukraine.
The FT reported on Friday that infrastructure owners had been invited in November to be credible threats due to Russia.
When he was asked how much he was concerned about the threat of Russia, Pettigrew said: “We are still focusing on the security of our assets. And I’m not going to go into the details of this.”
There is also an in -depth examination on electricity networks, given the lag of fossil fuels, which involves relying more on the equipment executed on electricity from wind and solar farms.
“This year only, we invest 10 billion pounds sterling in the network,” added Pettigrew. ” And in the next five years on the transmission system, we have just submitted a plan of 35 billion pounds sterling.
“I am therefore absolutely assured and sure that we invest in the network for resilience for security.”
