Aug 14, 2019
National Grid chief questions hospital power cuts
The head of National Grid has called for the government to investigate why regional networks allowed power to be cut to critical infrastructure such as railways and hospitals, as part of its inquiry into last week's blackout. In his first interview since Friday's blackout cut power to 1m UK homes and businesses and caused widespread transport disruption, John Pettigrew defended National Grid's performance, saying it had restored power within minutes to the electricity transmission system during the "Rare" outage. These include UK Power Networks, which covers London and the east of England, and Western Power Distribution, which covers the Midlands, south-west and Wales. Many passengers were stranded on trains for hours after the event, while one hospital in Ipswich lost power after its own back-up generators failed. Mr Pettigrew denied the electricity grid has become more vulnerable because renewable energy such as wind and solar power has been added to the network.
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