Power outage blame heaped on National Grid

Blame has been heaped on the National Grid after power outages were experienced in hundreds of thousands of households last week.
The National Grid on the other hand said the power outages had come about as a result of a sudden loss of frequency which was resulting from a problem experienced at both the Longannet 1 coal-powered fire station in Fife and Sizewell B nuclear power station. Both complications occurred at almost the same time which was around half past eleven in the morning.

Throughout the United Kingdom Sizewell B is the only pressurised water reactor station and generates close to one thousand and two hundred megawatts of power or approximately two per cent of the peak demand in the country. Longannet on the other hand has the capacity to generate two thousand and six hundred megawatts of electricity. The transmission network said the simultaneous complications at the two stations were purely coincidental and defended itself saying restoration of power to consumers was done within forty minutes.

Information has emerged that two of the four turbines at the Longannet power station had been out of service for more than a year as they were undergoing refurbishments. The remaining two on the other hand were undergoing maintenance.

British Energy which is the chief nuclear energy producer said the problem lay solely with a faulty instrument reading which had resulted in the power blackouts. The blackouts made the National Grid to cut off electricity supplies to electricity distributors in order to protect the integrity of its network which had been greatly threatened.

www.nationalgrid.com