National Grid boss: Heathrow and TfL outages not ‘systemic' network issues
The boss of National Grid has said recent outages at Heathrow airport and the London Tube are not evidence of reliability issues in the UK's power network.
John Pettigrew told the PA news agency the two incidents were 'isolated and unconnected' and added that the resilience of the power grid is 'very robust'.
Heathrow was forced to close for most of the day on March 21 because of a fire at a nearby electrical substation which started the previous night, disrupting more than 270,000 air passenger journeys.
And on Monday, Transport for London (TfL) was forced to close the Elizabeth, Bakerloo, Jubilee and Northern lines after a fault on National Grid's transmission network.
The malfunction also caused a blaze at an electrical substation in Maida Vale.
Mr Pettigrew said on Thursday: 'In terms of broader resilience for network, I'd say that these incidents are not pointing to anything systemic.'
Power networks are being more closely scrutinised across Europe after a massive outage hit vast swathes of Spain last month.
The country's energy minister Sara Aagesen said earlier this week that the blackout was triggered by a sudden loss of power at a substation in Granada.
However, investigations are ongoing into what caused the failure, and why it triggered such a huge power cut.
Mr Pettigrew said: 'It will be important to look at the outcome of that investigation and see what it means for us.'
National Grid, a company listed on the London Stock Exchange, owns vast swathes of the power grid across Britain.
It is partway through a £60 billion investment programme across the energy networks it manages, including the so-called Great Grid Upgrade in England, Scotland and Wales.
The works are a large part of the Government's plans to decarbonise the power grid by 2030, which also involves building vast amounts of new wind and solar farms.
Mr Pettigrew said the switch to renewable energy sources and the fast changes to how the energy grid works would not raise the risks of blackouts in the UK.
He said: 'The UK, we have world class reliability. We invest massively in the asset health and resilience of the network.
'If you look at some of the core indicators of the overall condition of the network (such as unplanned unavailability of assets) that actually continued to improve over the last decade.'
He added: 'There's no evidence of any deterioration in the reliability of the network. We just have to keep focused on it.'
Mr Pettigrew is to step down later this year after nearly a decade in the job, to be replaced by Shell executive Zoe Yujnovich.
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