Britain hit by unusual power activity hours before Spain blackout
Britain's electricity grid operator is investigating unexplained power plant failures that hit the UK's system hours before Spain and Portugal were plunged into blackouts.
Control room staff at the National Energy System Operator (Neso) observed unusual activity on Sunday that saw the power frequency shift unexpectedly in the early morning and the evening.
Keeping the frequency of the electricity system within certain limits is vital to keeping the lights on.
The first event began at around 2am with an outage at the Keadby 2 gas-fired power plant in Lincolnshire, followed by the unexplained failure of the Viking Link interconnector between the UK and Denmark.
At around 6pm, the frequency shifted unexpectedly again – with the cause currently unknown.
Neso, the quango that manages the British grid, confirmed to The Telegraph on Tuesday morning that officials were investigating.
A spokesman did not provide further details but said there was currently no suggestion that the outages were linked to each other or the massive system failures that occurred on Monday throughout Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France.
Such investigations are standard practice whenever there is an unexplained outage on the grid.
But it comes as grid stability is being closely scrutinised across Europe, with Spain and Portugal currently in the process of painstakingly re-activating their grids following the unprecedented loss of power nationwide.
Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister of Spain, refused to speculate on the suspected cause in a press conference late on Monday.
An earlier suggestion by Portuguese officials that the blackouts may have been triggered by a freak weather event have since been downplayed, leaving the events that led to Europe's worst electricity failure in decades shrouded in mystery.
Meanwhile, Jordi Sevilla, the former president of Spain's national grid operator, Red Eléctrica, suggested on Tuesday that the loss of power was indirectly caused by Spain's heavy reliance on solar and wind farms.
In an editorial for financial newspaper Cinco Días, Mr Sevilla said the rising dependence on renewables that did not generate so-called inertia, which helped to stabilise the frequency of electricity systems, created 'obvious' problems that had been ignored by politicians.
'Our electricity grid requires investment to adapt to the technical reality of the new generation mix,' he said, according to translated text.
The unexpected outages in Britain on Sunday were of a much smaller magnitude but have still spooked officials.
Market transparency data show Keadby 2 was scheduled to come online on Sunday morning to help meet high power demand in the morning, but it is understood it tripped at around 2am.
The Viking interconnector was expected to provide power to the grid but also suffered a sudden fault just after this.
According to market data published by Elexon, the cable was providing 236 megawatts of power to the British grid at 2am before the output suddenly fell to zero and remained at that level until about 11am.
This is unusual because the cable will usually follow power prices – unless the Neso intervenes – meaning it tends to be either exporting or importing at least some power most of the time.
It is understood that the problem may have been caused by a fault on the Danish side.
Officials are also investigating the unexpected frequency change at 6pm, but it is understood that no specific outages have been linked to that currently.
On Tuesday, a Neso spokesman said: 'As a prudent system operator we review all generator trips and events on our network as standard practice.
'We are still reviewing operational events across the weekend. However, it is highly unlikely that these events are connected to each other or related to the events on the European electricity network on Monday.
'Great Britain's electricity network was not affected by the power system incident on the European electricity network on Monday.
'We are working closely with our counterparts across Europe to understand the cause of today's power system incident and to offer our support. It is too early to comment further on today's events and whilst investigations are still ongoing.'
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