News blackout?

by Simon Handby in At home on 28.05.08

Everybody’s asking searching questions about Britain’s power network again, after a massive blackout yesterday that was said to have affected hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.

It sounds both intriguing, and slightly sinister: two of the UK’s biggest power stations – Sizewell B and Longannet – popped off the grid within a few minutes of each other. Not surprisingly, nuclear-fuelled Sizewell B grabbed the headlines – it produces around 3% of all the UK’s electricity, but coal-fired Longannet is capable of generating twice as much power. Together, they account for up to 9% of the country’s electricity production.

The causes of yesterday’s outages haven’t been revealed. Although Sizewell B operator British Energy was quick to reassure the public that the problem was with conventional equipment at the plant, that won’t satisfy conspiracy theorists.

One friend of mine was convinced that something more sinister was afoot, but transporting electrical power is complicated work. Unlike something innocuous like water, it can’t be stored in huge quantities, and it tends to be more dangerous if it gets into places that it shouldn’t.

It’s no surprise, perhaps, that yesterday’s problems should add to calls for more power stations, but the two don’t necessarily follow. As this handy National Grid document shows, the outages didn’t come during peak demand, which normally happens in the early evening. As such, the grid wouldn’t have been operating anywhere near its capacity.

You can’t just switch on one power station when another goes down, though. With the distribution network suddenly missing up to a tenth of its supply, and voltage, current and frequency potentially all over the shop, it’s probably inevitable that parts of the grid should go down under the strain. Had the system’s operators been expecting to lose the two power stations, increased production elsewhere would probably have kept things up and running.

IMAGE by Flickr user *spud*