Image credit: steelguru.com
Guess who ends up paying that bill? National Grid may yet be broken up as the inquest into the fiasco goes on, and a vague comment says wind power needs to be ‘more secure’.
Three energy firms are to pay a total of £10.5m following August’s power cut that left over a million people without electricity and caused travel chaos, reports BBC News.
Although the power cut lasted for less than an hour, it affected homes, businesses and hospitals, while rail services were disrupted for days.
RWE Generation, Orstead and UK Power Networks will pay into a redress fund run by the UK’s energy watchdog, Ofgem.
Ofgem says it will continue to look into the role National Grid played.
The power cut struck just before 17:00 BST on Friday 9 August, and blackouts spread across the Midlands, the South East, South West, North West and North East of England, and Wales.
Following Ofgem’s investigation, RWE Generation, which runs Little Barford Power Station, and Orstead, which runs Hornsea offshore wind farm, have both agreed to pay £4.5m. Distributor company UK Power Networks has agreed to pay £1.5m.
The money will be put into a redress fund, which will be overseen by Energy Savings Trust, a charity.
‘Exceptional event’
Energy watchdog Ofgem launched its investigation in August.
It found that after a lightning strike, Hornsea offshore wind farm and Little Barford Power Station both went down.
Jonathan Brearley, Ofgem’s incoming chief executive, told the BBC’s Today programme that the simultaneous outage was an “exceptional event”.
He said the equipment within the generators should have “ridden through” the lightning strike and it should not have resulted in a countrywide power failure.
Mr Brearley said the Ofgem report recommended three sets of actions for UK energy companies.
The part of National Grid that gives Britain power needs to be set up “the right way”, and he said new forms of generation – such as wind power – needed to be a more secure source of supply.
Finally, Mr Brearley added, “if we do ever have to disconnect people we want to make sure we protect our critical infrastructure and the most vulnerable”.
Continued here.
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January 3, 2020 at 04:46AM
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