Bolt from blue led to blackout

Lightning knocked out power across England

LIGHTNING has been blamed for Britain’s biggest power blackout for a decade.

National Grid said a single strike set off a chain of events earlier this month that left more than a million households and businesses without electricity, and thousands of train passengers stranded for hours.

Regulator Ofgem has launched an investigation into the incident on August 9, with the possibility of power firms being fined.

National Grid’s interim report traces events back to lightning striking an electricity pylon and overhead cables north of London at 4.52pm. This knocked out a local power source. But for some reason two large generators 150 miles apart – the nearby Little Barford gas-fired plant on the Cambridgeshire/ Bedfordshire border and the Hornsea wind farm off the East Yorkshire coast – also went down, “each associated with the lightning strike”.

The report adds that “this appears to represent an extremely rare and unexpected event”.

It led to 1.1 million customers being without power for between 15 and 50 minutes.

Train services across the South East were also hit, even though power to the rail lines was

maintained. A total of 371 services were cancelled, with 220 drastically curtailed and 873 delayed.

The London Underground, Newcastle Airport and Ipswich Hospital were also affected.

Jonathan Brearley, Ofgem’s executive director of systems and networks, said: “There are still areas where we need to use our statutory powers to investigate these outages.”

Justin Bowden, the GMB union’s national secretary, said: “A private monopoly like National Grid is not the best way of ensuring that the lights are kept on.

“It is time that this part of the National Grid was brought into the public sector.”