Datacenters near Heathrow seemingly stay up as substation fire closes airport

London’s Heathrow Airport will close on Friday after a fire in an electricity substation it relies on caused a power outage - but nearby datacenters seem to be unaffected. “Due to a fire at an electrical substation supplying the airport, Heathrow is experiencing a significant power outage,” states a popup message on the …

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Questions will doubtless be asked

"Questions will doubtless be asked about why Heathrow doesn’t possess sufficient generation capacity to cover and event of this sort – like datacenters do."

I'm sure safety-critical airport functions (eg air traffic control, radar, runway lights and radio navigation aids) do have backup power so they can continue for a while. Buit all the things needed to support "customers" (which does not include perople arriving in an emergency) is probably approaching the power requirements of a small town.

I think the more interesting question is why the substation is apparently a single point of failure. I guess the answer is a combination of increaed power consumption and minimal infrastructure investment to support same, perhaps in part due to those datacentres.

[Ian Johnston]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

A quick Google suggests that Heathrow has around 84m passengers per year and that 75,000 people work there.

Assuming that passengers are on average there for one hour and employees are there 8 hours per day for 220 days each, that's an average occupancy over the 8760 hour in a year of (84m + 75,000*8*220) / 8760 = 25,000, more or less. A small town indeed: that's roughly the population of Elgin or Huntingdon. In practice, of course, there are probably twice as many there during poaks.

[anthonyhegedus]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

It's an Airport. Passengers getting outbound flights are there typically for longer than an hour. Probably a median of 2-3 hours I'd say as a rough estimate.

[nijam]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

> Assuming that passengers are on average there for one hour ...

Have you ever been to Heathrow?

I think not, otherwise your time estimate would be very substantailly higher.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

The last time I travelled internationally via Heathrow, check in was at least 2 (two) hours before scheduled take-off, and advised to be there 3 ( three) hours in advance.

I doubt that the cafes, restaurants, duty-free shopping, escalators, moving walkways etc. are considered sufficiently essential to warrant emergency power for more than a few minutes in an unexpected blackout.

This is certainly embarrassing, like the fact that the enormous explosion at Buncefield oil storage depot was genuinely an accident (how could such a major disaster not be due to deliberate sabotage?). Heathrow is, according to reports, the second busiest airport in the world, only beaten by Dubai. There are lots of stories of Russian agents seeking ways to destabilise the UK and other Western countries. Seems like they can add this one to their list of easy targets in the UK.

[anothercynic]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

It's fifth-busiest in the world and the third-busiest non-US airport, but it is the busiest airport in Europe.

:-)

[RegGuy1]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Well the moving walkways at Manchester Airport haven't worked for years. Apparently it was too expensive to pay the maintenance. But they managed to find £2bn to upgrade Terminal 2. Hmm.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

That's a common "feature" of new builds of any type here in the UK and possibly around the world. There's always money for new, but never enough for long term maintenance. Even down at the bottom end of spending. Fancy new combined hands-free taps/hand dryers in public loos? Give them a year and there's manual push taps bodged in and standard hand dryers on the wall. Council builds a hugely expensive "water feature" along the sea front, 300 metres long, many fountains. A year or two later, it's converted into a flower bed because that's cheaper to maintain. (Personal experience of our Local Gov in this case) but still money for other new vanity projects.

[Mage]

Re: sure safety-critical airport functions

You'd hope they have a day+ of backup power. Are cost conscious accountants in charge of spending rather than analysing and forecasting for budgets etc?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: sure safety-critical airport functions

They do but it's all stored in batteries in the branch of Currys in the duty free shopping area. Expect that someone is furiously wiring them together right now.

[navarac]

Re: sure safety-critical airport functions

Reading the reports, the back up is in the same location as the main supply that is on fire. Well done, idiots.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: sure safety-critical airport functions

Last I heard, the outage was only affecting Terminal 2 and 4 - which would suggest that the rest of the airport gets its power from a different source.

But the outage could also have been affected traffic lights, parking, hotels and other stuff around the airport that would make it more difficult to deal with the usual passenger traffic. (as well as any disruption to the roads and public transport around the area).

[Roj Blake]

Re: sure safety-critical airport functions

That makes no sense. Terminal 2 is right next to Terminal 3 in the middle of the airport, while Terminal 4 is way over by the Southern perimeter

[TRT]

Re: sure safety-critical airport functions

I believe there's a Liberator in orbit around Terminal, and there remains sufficient power for emergency teleport only. The computing centre, however, is shutting down having failed you. It is sorry.

[AndrueC]

Re: sure safety-critical airport functions

Confirmed.

[cyberdemon]

Re: sure safety-critical airport functions

I am hearing that T2 had recently 'switched' its backup power from Diesel to a Biomass CHP. I'm not sure how true that is (ie whether or not they still had diesels on standby in addition to the CHP plant) and I take anything Richard Tice says with a bucket of salt to drown out the bad taste his words leave.. But when it comes to the merits of Biomass, we do agree.

If that was the only backup, and was connected via the same substation, it would be very silly indeed.

It might also be that the generator(s) are not synchronous i.e. they run at frequencies other than 50Hz for efficiency, rectify to DC to combine with solar/batteries, and use inverters that do not function without an upstream 50Hz reference

Such generators are supplementary and NOT backup - a true backup needs to be able to support the entire load with no outside connection

Also worth noting that there are also reports that the "substation's backup generator failed" which might be a separate incident not related to the airport, but would have meant that there was no power to operate the switchgear to fail over to the second supergrid transformer. It may transpire that this was deliberately shut down and isolated to enable the firefighters to use ladders and hoses on HV bushings, which is not a good idea if they can be energised from a remote control panel

[Eclectic Man]

Re: sure safety-critical airport functions

A site I worked at that ran the UK's CHIEF* system had an oil store and emergency generator in the car park. I was concerned that this could be 'taken out' by a truck leaving the M3, but was told that it had been passed by the relevant people. It was never used 'in anger', and the generator was tested every now and then, but the switching gear to transfer to the on site emergency generator fro Uk mains and back again? Nah, that would have been too, umm, what was the word, I'll get it in a moment.

Umm ...

Oh yes: "risky"

That was it. "too risky".

(Sorry, but can anyone let me know WTF an "emergency generator" is for?)

*Cargo Handling Import Export Freight.

Edit - aded the word "generator"

[Justthefacts]

Re: sure safety-critical airport functions

That’s not realistic. But two separated connections to the grid is.

[John Smith 19]

"You'd hope they have a day+ of backup power. "

How about (and this is a somewhat complex idea so bear with me) the airport is wired to two substations, either of which can handle the load.

I think you can bet that every airline operating out of there will be wanting a word with Heathrow management.

They will be expected to cover passenger costs but in this case it is absolutely not there fault and entirely down to the airports frankly p**s-poor DRM planning, despite charging top $ prices to the airlines for their location relative to London.

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: "You'd hope they have a day+ of backup power. "

The company I worked at before retiring had a 'near-Heathrow' DC and there were three separate grid connections on totally isolated routes, all of which had the capacity to run the DC on their own. Part of why they are sited in/near populous areas is to ensure that such connections are available along with multiple backhaul connections for the comms side.

I appreciate that Heathrow believes they are too important to risk shutting down to test failover but as with data backups, if it has not been tested it doesn't exist.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "You'd hope they have a day+ of backup power. "

The substation has more than one transformer but in case of fire something will be severely broken.

Could be it gets power from two places but do those places get power from multiple sources?

With the increase in power consumption over time could be that only one of two sources can't handle the total load anymore.

[cyberdemon]

Re: "You'd hope they have a day+ of backup power. "

It's a typical double-circuit mesh substation, it has two 275kV feeds, which may well come from different places, and two supergrid transformers which can be configured to use either incoming feed. Normally I think they would use both, but I don't think they would permit a load to be so big that it would instantly trip if they had to disconnect one circuit / transformer.

The problem yesterday seems to be that a transformer exploded violently, perhaps due to contamination in the oil - it may be 60-70 years old, and it uses oil for both cooling and electrical insulation, as well as paper for insulation. Contaminants can leach out of the paper if it is too hot for a long period of time, or if there are arcs e.g. during tap-changing. And the resistivity of the oil apparently drops with temperature too, so internal arcing can be catastrophic.

Because the fire was so violent and the built-in fire suppression so ineffective, they needed fire crews with hoses and cherry pickers, which meant it was not safe to simply switch over to the second transformer - both 275kV incoming circuits needed to be de-energised until the firefighters had finished, hence the length of the blackout

I've heard (via comments referencing someone speaking to the Daily Mail) that the load was around 106%, (I assume that means both transformers running at 53%?) but if they need to take one off for maintenance then the other one is going to get quite hot..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "You'd hope they have a day+ of backup power. "

the load was around 106%, (I assume that means both transformers running at 53%?

From what I've read the substation as a whole was rated for 76MVA but loaded at 80MVA when the transformer went pop. The backup transformer was arranged as a fail over system in the event of a fault in the primary, not as load-sharing.

[Tim99]

Re: "You'd hope they have a day+ of backup power. "

perhaps due to contamination in the oil - it may be 60-70 years old, and it uses oil for both cooling and electrical insulation, as well as paper for insulation - I used to do this stuff routinely. Interestingly, the condition of transformers from the 1920s-1930s were often better than newer ones (value engineering?).

The cost of an oil condition monitoring scheme is trivial. Examination of materials entrained in the oil give a good indication of how it is performing - e.g. furfural levels in the oil is an indicator of the extent to which the paper insulation of the windings has deteriorated.

[John Smith 19]

BTW

Seems Heathrow was connected to four substations.

So WTF couldn't they switch substations to their main bus and keep running on the three others?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: BTW

AFAIK there's no "main bus" as such. Heathrow grew incrementally over the past 80 years, and new additions were probably added independently to avoid the need to redesign the whole airport infrastructure each time.

[FW2012]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

I found a figure online saying the annual energy use for Heathrow was 150GWh

If that's correct then about 30MW of installed generators should be enough to run the whole site taking into account demand power peaks, Wetherspoons etc

That's probably 5 to 10 million quid of generator if you bought a load of 1MW sets (not how it would be done but gives an idea of unit costs)

The big DCs in Slough are probably tier 4 and will have the correct generator capacity plus a second substation feed where possible. And at least 3 days of fuel onsite.

Basically this tells me that Heathrow is run on the cheap and it's relatively trivial for a terrorist to knock it out for weeks if they wanted to.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Or some system to use the APUs of planes that are parked there. I don't have figures but I imagine they could run a significant chunk of the airport using the generators built into all of the planes there.

Perhaps with scheduled rolling blackouts - Terminal 1 down for an hour, then T2, etc

[anthonyhegedus]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

That sounds incredibly complicated, expensive, unreliable and hard to manage. Not to mention all the points I've just made, again, for emphasis. I'd give you a downvote but it's such an "out there" comment that you actually deserve a pint.

[TRT]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Be far easier to use the EVs in the car park.

[anthonyhegedus]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Yes, a car park full of dead AVs in an airport that you can't get out of because the car park barriers are electric sounds like a recipe for a fun week away!

[TRT]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Long stay.

[David 132]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Or reverse the current direction on the moving walkways and turn them into dynamo treadmills instead. By the time the passengers realize they've been walking for an hour and still haven't moved past the first advertising poster, you'll have generated plenty of power.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Too many EVs in the car park probably contributed to the overload, tbh!

[S4qFBxkFFg]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

I found some numbers, but it looks like hundreds of kW per aircraft (and that includes main engine generators, not just APUs).

Let's say 100KW to be safe.

30MW (using the value another commenter posted above)/100KW = 300

Are there 300 airliners parked at Heathrow? I don't know, but even if you can send all of that power back down the connector which is designed to deliver power TO the aircraft, it seems inadequate.

[anthonyhegedus]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

... and also what's the use of an airport which requires 300+ aircraft to be on the stand all day long just to power the airport?

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

In addition to which the aircrew, or some of them would have to remain aboard while the APU is active

[R Soul]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Substantially increased retail opportunities in the shopping malls.

The OP might well be on to something here.

[munnoch]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

They probably generate at a much higher line frequency. Common on planes and ships. I'm guessing as that is easier to rectify (shorter time interval between the peaks for the smoothing caps to carry over).

Besides that I'm pretty sure there won't be too many aircraft owners happy to let you plug random stuff into their electrical systems.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

400Hz, iirc

[PRR]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

> a much higher line frequency. Common on planes and ships. I'm guessing as that is easier to rectify

My father did his advanced degree on related topics. Optimum line frequency depends on geometry and properties of transformer iron, but in general scales with Line Length. Early iron favored 20 even 16Hz (despite flicker) for low iron loss. We don't run the 45 mile line from the dam to my house at high Hz because all that inductance would choke the flow. 25Hz is good for long large systems, 50-60Hz is affordable for flicker-adverse systems. On an airplane the 400Hz alternators are notably lighter and not a problem when the loads are within 100 meters. Ships may have both 60 and 400 Hz buses. Going far afield, Calif and part of Euro-Grid say "F^*# AC!" and do AC-DC-AC conversion so line reactance is moot (but arcs can be spectacular), and Pete's friend says houses will do DC someday (when?).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

> Pete's friend says houses will do DC someday

Cue The Mask: "Smokin'!"

[munnoch]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Thanks for that. I always wondered why early railway electrification schemes were at 16Hz and now I know.

[hoola]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

But is not as simple as that, all the transport links will be messed up.

Having 1000s of people arriving and then not able to leave effectively create even more chaos.

This is a huge outage.

It is also unclear if the actual incident is a a flight safety issue as well.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

> It is also unclear if the actual incident is a a flight safety issue as well.

It's perfectly clear, there is no flight safety issue. Stop spreading scaremongering conspiracy crap.

[ACZ]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Yes - it is surprising that Heathrow isn't able to withstand this kind of event, especially given its nature as a piece of major national infrastructure and the fact that any disaster management planning must have covered this scenario. The TFL website is showing underground trains on the Piccadilly Line running to Hatton Cross (a 4 minute walk from the Heathrow T2/T3 tube stop). As other commentards have said, why not have a load of generators ready to fill the gap in the event of a power failure? - the capital/operational cost would be minimal compared to the cost of Heathrow being shut for a few hours, let alone 24 hours.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

..or why not have a reduced power plan? Shut down the useless shops they try to make you go in, shut some of the executive lounges etc. Or offer a reduced service but don't shut the whole airport... it does read like one of those UK H&S over reactions... but perhaps I'm wrong.

[Lon24]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

This is frightening. The on-site back-up generators may not be able to power the whole site. Apparently only landing lights, ATC and other vital services presumably mandated by H&S or IATA directives. No provision for even a reduced service.

On failure planes were diverted or turned around. This was after midnight when the demands for landing were low. Just keeping one terminal open should have kept incoming incoming even if they had to abandon departures. They only needed one runway so there is plenty of parking. Moreover planes and crew are there for a more rapid recovery when full power was restored.

Reduced service is not unreasonable, no service isn't. The complacency of the Heathrow CEO on radio 4 this morning was breathtaking. He couldn't even fake an apology. I think that says it all.

[R Soul]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

"Just keeping one terminal open should have kept incoming incoming even if they had to abandon departures. They only needed one runway so there is plenty of parking."

Easier said than done. There probably aren't enough gates at one LHR terminal to handle arriving planes for more than an hour or two. Airline staff ground teams, baggage handlers, etc generally can't switch between terminals at short notice either: different companies, different contracts and so on. Playing Jenga with planes parked on the unused runway and taxiways is non-trivial too. Oh and the crews for outbound flights might not be at LHR once the lights got turned on again.

Even if all this was feasible, captains could still have taken the decision to divert elsewhere or not fly at all and avoid what was sure to be a bigger than usual shit-show at LHR.

[TRT]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

It's not so much Heathrow as Heath Robinson.

[Roj Blake]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Good luck walking from Hatton Cross station to the T2/T3 one, you would need to trespass on the airport!

[cyberdemon]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

This is a BIG substation. It's a national grid transmission station so it's going to be at least 132kV if not 275. There was a minor spike in UK grid frequency at 7am this morning which may have been due to the sudden drop in overall load due to this event.

Datacentres probably stayed on with gas/diesel backup.. I drove past what could only have been a datacentre in Didcot a few weeks ago.. Anonymous warehouse with four huge gas turbine units on the side, i'd guess at least 50MW each

The question really is what caused this failure. NG substations have a ton of protection systems to make sure this can't happen from simple overload, so either those protections failed (unlikely but possible) or foul play i.e. sabotage.

This is going to cost a fortune in airline disaster insurance just for starters, so no doubt Mad Vlad Putin is laughing his head off, whether his goons were involved or not

[cyberdemon]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Doh, should have read the article, the 7am frequency spike was much later, so likely unrelated

[anthonyhegedus]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

...but it *could* have been true, if it was true.

[short]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Electrical installations like this in the USA are getting fences / walls built around them to discourage bored / mischievous people from shooting at the infrastructure. Or, at least, shooting in a targetted manner.

All nations' electrical infrastructure rely very much on people not trying to sabotage or interfere with them, much like front door locks on houses are reliant on politeness of people not to just want to pick them. If we can no longer make these assumptions, defending all these things will be a massive job.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

I just hope there were no frisbees involved..

[TRT]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

JIMMY!

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

>much like front door locks on houses are reliant on politeness of people not to just want to pick them.

Or kick them.

[short]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

The transformer that seems to be on fire was wrapped in what looks like a (retrofitted?) fire suppression system - the red pipework in this google driveby -

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZB6HTnZ9FPYDC6627 (google maps link, just looks like a sketchy link shortener)

I'm only moderately informed on this size of substation, but it struck me as an unusual addition. Maybe this substation was of a generally burny persuasion?

[42656e4d203239]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

From elsewhere, not personal knowledge, the thing that caught fire in the substation was a reactor (for power factor correction AIUI), it had a fire supression system but that supression system isn't there to put out the 10000l (11936.5928 walnuts to use the correct El Reg unit) of burning cooling oil, it's there to stop the fire spreading. Apparently they just let the feckers burn and make sure nothing else catches fire. It will take a while to sort out becasue many many tests have to be carried out on the rest of the substation - apparently you can't just crane a new reactor into place & connect to the grid - who knew?

Other useless info:- the substation has a 272kV feed from the grid and feeds 66kV and 11kV to various places, including the north east corner of Heathrow Airport.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Hmm. Where'd you get that info?

From pictures i've seen, there is indeed a charred shunt reactor, but it's nowhere near as blasted as the transformer, which looks as if it either exploded (e.g. due to overtemperature oil, which becomes less insulating as it heats up and can arc inside, leading to a very fast runaway) or was blown up. (The transformer is completely gutted, with smoke billowing from where the HV bushings used to be, and the cooling radiator is a twisted and mangled pile of scrap, I can't fathom how that could be caused by a neighbouring shunt reactor)

E.g. this footage https://xcancel.com/Turbinetraveler/status/1903017531020837229#m

The three smouldering posts are what used to be the 275kV bushings on the transformer, and the grey 'bin' to the left is, i believe, a reactor (aka inductor). The blackened wreck at the back/top of the image is (/was) the cooling radiator

It's possible that it was sabotage and someone put something nasty e.g. carbon into the oil, or it's possible that it simply failed violently due to old age and poor maintenance. We may never be told which it was

Maybe someone blew it up with a drone, but Shirley that would have shown up on one of LHR's radars...?

[BadRobotics]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

There is an electrical engineer who made a comment to the Daily Fail, that this was an old substation and was driven close to it's limit. On one occasion 106%? I'm just a nerd at a keyboard, so this means nothing to me.

[David 132]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Given the general state of infrastructure investment in the UK - the Reacher Gilt attitude of "run it at 110% non-stop, preventative maintenance is too expensive, and surplus capacity would just be leaving money on the table" - I am quite happy to believe that this was the cause. Occam's Razor and all that; while I'm sure Mad Vlad is pleased at the outcome, I see little credible evidence to suggest his sticky fingers in this mess.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Sadly, you may well be right. But i doubt we proles will ever know for sure.

-> The luck is gone, the brain is shot, but the liquor we still got! ->

[Sam Crawley]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Kudos to the wag that has flagged the substation as "Temporarily Closed" on Google Maps!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

"This is going to cost a fortune in airline disaster insurance just for starters"

Anyone who had a problem with GCHQ/MI5/MI6 will be laughing. That's why the anti-terror unity was called in to investigate.

[munnoch]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

I remember when a barge with a crane on it took out one of the main power lines serving Tokyo. I was looking out the office window wondering why the street below appeared to be filled with fog. That was all the backup gennies kicking in. Our building was unaffected due to being on a different power feed. Apparently it was standard practice to alternate each building in the CDB across the 3 different lines serving the city. The Japanese take resiliency a little bit more seriously than the UK due to the omnipresent threat of multiple natural disasters (earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

[cyberdemon]

(earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

Or indeed, their infamous 60Hz/50Hz split.. That undoubtedly means their grid(s) is/are significantly less reliable than ours

I personally think that the UK grid has been rather too reliable - that is to say we have become complacent in expecting a 100% service.

In Cuba they suffer blackouts everyday.. I'm sure Havana airport would not have closed for a simple lack of power, because they are procedurally well used to it by now..

I think that a full scale test of our "Black Start" plan would be very useful for the UK (though no doubt costly) but I fear it may be too late to organise such a thing in today's geopolitical chaos

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: (earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

"I personally think that the UK grid has been rather too reliable "

GB grid (i.e. "National Grid") you mean - Northern Ireland is part of the "all island" island of Ireland grid, though that grid does have interconnectors to Scotland (from NI) and Wales (from Ireland).

[munnoch]

Re: (earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

I'm not sure why the split would make the grid inherently less reliable? In 2023 Japan consumed over 3 times the amount of electricity as the UK (more people and more industry) so either side of that 50/60 split on its own would be larger than the UK grid. There are also DC interconnects between the two sides.

Depends on where you live in the UK whether you consider the grid to be "too" reliable. For the last few winters its been fairly common for large numbers of rural properties to be cut off for days at a time after a weather event.

[cyberdemon]

Re: (earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

> For the last few winters its been fairly common for large numbers of rural properties to be cut off for days at a time after a weather event.

True, but that's a "Distribution Network" issue. When I say "the grid", I am really talking about the transmission system, which has been generally very reliable in the UK.

> I'm not sure why the split would make the grid inherently less reliable?

Because they are weakly coupled in frequency via spinning frequency converters (a 6 pole-pair motor coupled to a 5-pole-pair motor, perhaps with a flywheel in the middle) but I am only taking it from the earlier post that the grid there is less reliable, based on all of the generators that spin up there. They also have a lot of extreme weather / earthquakes that make nuke reactors scram (or not, as the case may be) so that may be the cause, rather than the 50/60 split.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: (earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

>the UK grid has been rather too reliable

A major energy analyst I had some professional overlap with some years ago and rate very highly, recently got hold of the full dataset for grid frequency.

It's worse than you think.

Frequency excursions are rising sharply & nonlinearly. Currently at IIRC over 100 a month. That's 3 per day.

Key point is: they're drift, not event. The grid simply no longer under stable control.

!!

If any one of them escapes emergency remediation, with expected cascade that's a subsecond national shutdown.

Now, the Brit engineers still do absolutely brilliant Blackstart prep on a continuing basis. (REALLY quite impressive -- benchmark gold standard) (No idea how they've managed to escape the beancounters.) But it's REALLY something you don't want to need to do. Because so much can still go wrong.

> - that is to say we have become complacent in expecting a 100% service.

Very much so.

And it will "suddenly" start to go very wrong very quickly when the last reserve protection is exhausted.

"How did you go bankrupt?"

"Very slowly, then very quickly."

[cyberdemon]

Re: (earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

> A major energy analyst I had some professional overlap with some years ago and rate very highly, recently got hold of the full dataset for grid frequency.

Would that be Kathryn Porter, perchance?

I rate her very highly, too, and I hope they put her in charge of NESO (and then abolish/renationalise the DNOs)

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: (earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

That's her: Kathryn is quietly rock-solid and balances deep detail knowledge & hands-on competence with awareness of the larger systemic context AND the overarching PURPOSE of the residents' and industries' needs (again: down to details).

She is PROPAH uber-geek.

(I mean, that blog post's got a link to a gloriously ineptly filmed example of "Galloping Conductors". Wut? I'd never even heard the term before. A plate of 1" bolts sheered off...)

She posts more-detailed info & analyses on her TwitterX a/c. Recommended. Eg, where anyone can pick up the govt or OFGEM renewables "costing" analyses and 5mins later hold only the smoking ashes of frantic deceit in their hands, she'll be adding that this particular site's 2nd & 3rd plants need doubling and that particular circuit is at particular early-failure risk and so on.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: (earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

Speak of the devil... Update from Kathryn from her digging so far:

Even the biomass "backup" was mostly mgt fantasy.

The primary backup was to switch in supply from 2 other substations. But, again, not a real backup: they structurally take hours to switch over.

The only other backup she's found (FOR ALL HEATHROW!) is some diesel generators for the runway lights.

This...is astonishing. This is worse than even the biomass farce. That coy "landing" backup that Heathrow kept bleating...just the bloody lights.

The otherwise inexplicable decision to close the whole airport even for landings despite having a "landing backup" suddenly makes perfect sense.

We are seriously into aggravated misfeasance or even malfeasance territory here.

[cyberdemon]

Re: (earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

I see - Page 40 of https://www.heathrow.com/content/dam/heathrow/web/common/documents/company/heathrow-2-0-sustainability/futher-reading/Heathrow_Net%20Zero%20Carbon%20Strategy_v13.pdf

But, this pamphlet is an oversimplification intended for pointy-haired bosses and not engineers; I don't think it's valid to take it as read that they _ONLY_ had generators for "runway lights" - it indeed says "predominantly for runway lights" but almost certainly would include other critical systems such as the ATC control tower, radar, critical IT systems, etc.

My personal theory is that in the hours following the substation failure, this clusterfuck was mainly exacerbated by grid-tie inverters, i.e. power sources such as the CHP, Wind, Solar and Batteries, which in normal conditions would merrily alleviate the load on the grid supply - until such a point as that grid supply is gone, and then they are borked, unable to sync to any upstream grid.

Then while the grid supply tries to come back on, they are unable to contribute any power. This is a microcosm of a major UK-wide issue, i.e. the feasibility of "Black Start"

The electrical engineers technicians would have to isolate _everything_ (including the EV chargers in the car park) until the total connected load was low enough that one single source could power the local grid, and then start up the grid-tied inverters one by one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: (earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

Heathrow's idea of critical IT systems are the ones that keep the cash registers ringing in the shops. Everything else is unimportant.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: (earthquake, volcano, typhoon, sea monsters...).

Then while the grid supply tries to come back on, they are unable to contribute any power. This is a microcosm of a major UK-wide issue, i.e. the feasibility of "Black Start"

The electrical engineers technicians would have to isolate _everything_ (including the EV chargers in the car park) until the total connected load was low enough that one single source could power the local grid, and then start up the grid-tied inverters one by one.

Soo.. How feasible (or sensible) would it be for LHR to create its own island? So diverse grid incomers feeding that normally, and if the grid fails, spool up some gas turbines. I've seen those used to power test datacentres and it's been quite the spectacle. One or more containerised jet engines rocking up with a tanker of jet fuel and more power than diesel generators can supply. Downside has been having to notify any residents nearby that it'll get noisy for a few hours, but LHR wouldn't notice if a couple more jets spool up, and has plenty of fuel on site.

I think a few large DCs use turbines instead of diesel, and as I understand it, the downside is they take a little longer to get up to speed compared to diesel, and the noise. Delay is handled by batteries, or maybe flywheel storage. But I also wonder (and having worked with LHR before on comms projects) if services like EV chargers have their own power contracts. So Ferrovial makes a lot of money charging for err.. charging services. I suspect stuff like the solar panels at the airport are part of a roof rental deal and whoever operates those gets to sell power and kick back some of the revenue. But that might mean LHR's power plan has grown a bit ad-hoc, and there's no clear or easy seperation of essential vs non-essential power users. Something obviously is wrong, and I would have thought in a DR situation, LHR could have restored power in <5mins.

[Headley_Grange]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

ATC typically has backup power for however long it would take them to "clear the skies" - i.e. make sure that everything inbound is diverted somewhere. It's typically an hour, but might be a bit longer in busier airports with less ability to divert. There's no point in it being any longer than this unless everything else in the airport is on backup power, which is pretty unrealistic.

[Roland6]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

>” I think the more interesting question is why the substation is apparently a single point of failure.”

This incident raises the related issue of Heathrow being a single point of failure; should we be even thinking of installing a third runway….

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

This incident raises the related issue of Heathrow being a single point of failure; should we be even thinking of installing a third runway…

Or a 33rd datacentre, especially when a lot of bit-barn tenants don't really need to be close to London. Also I guess an option for 'digital Britain' might be paying for diverse fibre to be run to somewhere in England that isn't as power constrained as inside or around the M25. Make that carrier neutral, call it good and reject planning applications for bit-barns where there's no power. But the kind of thing governments can do, especially with datacentres being regarded as CNI.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

"somewhere in England that isn't as power constrained as inside or around the M25"

Make that somewhere in the UK unless you're worried about a devolved government cutting off London. In these wild times I suppose you have to envisage such situations.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Make that somewhere in the UK unless you're worried about a devolved government cutting off London. In these wild times I suppose you have to envisage such situations.

Ah, well, devolution was why I made the caveat, ie HMG probably couldn't subsidise fibre into Wales or Scotland because the devolved governments would need to co-operate. Within England, it could do what it wants. Wild times stuff is probably more power related, ie shenanigans around exporting electricity to Scotland when the wind isn't blowing and their general lack of baseload generation to support power hungry datacentres. Incentivising new datacentre clusters around East Anglia would probably make more sense given proximity to London in a latency sense, existing fibre & power interconnectors towards Europe and Sizewell.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

The time signals take to go up a fibre to Scotland is significant enough to make it a non-starter for some applications (e.g. financial). Whether that is sane or not is a different question ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Microsoft is happily hosting (and expanding) its UK West Azure region near Cardiff.

[Graham Cobb]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

It's probably easier to move power than data. For network capacity, round-trip delays and fault tolerance, it would probably be better to keep it within South/Central England as much as possible. You don't want to try to build the network capacity to shift a significant amount of London's data processing demands to, say, Dinorwig.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Oh, it's definitely easier to move data than power..

Optical fibres don't have 'resistance' in the same way electrical conductors do.. It's not as if one has to inject photons at 400keV just to get them efficiently from one end to the other!

But for electrons, yes we do have to do that

[Graham Cobb]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Of course [and I didn't downvote you]. But the reality is that power is not time sensitive in the same way!

Meeting the latency requirements of many of the data centre customers (which is what drives the price they are willing to pay) is what is hard - or even impossible. Power for the data centre costs a lot of money - but is relatively easy to solve by siting the datacentre near a major grid point. Putting a data centre in Dinorwig (to continue my silly example) introduces an absolute minimum of 2ms latency (just from speed of light delays - more with switching).

[cyberdemon]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Fair point (and I didn't downvote you either btw), but is 2ms really such a big problem?

Maybe for certain things like high-frequency trading (which is of dubious economical merit in my view) but certainly it's not going to be an issue for AI workloads for example since the compute step takes a lot longer than 2ms..

[Rob Daglish]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

I'm with cyberdemon on this one. You could have significantly more delay on MS365, or Google, or any one of a host of other data centre hosted stuff and never notice the delay. I can confidently say that as they are as slow and crumbly whether I'm in that London or at home in the frozen North... No, the real north. Beyond Manchester, but before Scotland. What do you mean, you didn't realise that was part of England?

[Barrie Shepherd]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Microwave links can provide better latency than fibre - is there not already a private microwave network from UK across to EU financial data centres?

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Microwave links can provide better latency than fibre

Yep, but also less capacity than fibre. Plus can get affected by atmospherics like fog, or the magic pixie smoke from a rather large transformer that's just had a very bad day.

[david 12]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Microwave links can provide better latency than fibre

Direct fibre beat dark microwave channels with 13ms Chicago-NYC in the early stage of the speed war -- which has since been driven down to 4ms direct microwave links. Almost all of that has been the effect of better routes and low-latency repeaters, wave speed hasn't changed that much.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

"Meeting the latency requirements of many of the data centre customers"

Apart from high-speed financial traders working on the basis that milli- or nano-seconds count, who else genuinely needs such low latency, bearing in mind only the people access that that data centre from a relatively local area will benefit? Note, I'e genuinely asking this because I can't think who else might need such low latency. After all, gamers are playing with low latency on servers 100's or 1000's of miles away from their location via a consumer ISP.

[Paul Kinsler]

Re: [Optical fibres] It's not as if one has to inject photons at 400keV just ...

You might find it educational to read up on the subject: coupling light into an optical fibre is not necessarily trivial, and optical fibre will not usefully transmit any frequency of light you might wish to send (notably due to absorption, inconvenient dispersive properties, or indeed various other things).

[Jellied Eel]

Re: [Optical fibres] It's not as if one has to inject photons at 400keV just ...

You might find it educational to read up on the subject: coupling light into an optical fibre is not necessarily trivial

These days, it pretty much is and pulsing light & moving bits is a whole lot easier and cheaper than moving lots of excited electrons from a remote windfarm to a bit-barn. Outside of the high frequency trading brigade, latency within the UK also isn't really an issue. So even stuff like synchronous replication between servers can only need <70ms, which at roughly 4.7ms/1000km, is also relatively trivial. Longer distances are possible with a bit of careful tuning. Most AI applications are also pretty much latency insensitive, although again probably need some tuning to avoid the BDP from slurping HTTP/HTTPS traffic down 100Gbps wavelengths.

But then after the best part of 30yrs designing networks, it still amazes me the number of 'network engineers' that don't understand the LFP problem, and how to avoid it. And no, UDP isn't the solution because that'll usually create a different set of problems.. :p

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: [Optical fibres] It's not as if one has to inject photons at 400keV just ...

"Outside of the high frequency trading brigade"

Whom I would regard with the same sort of disfavour as crypto-miners and LLM trainers.

[Graham Cobb]

Re: [Optical fibres] It's not as if one has to inject photons at 400keV just ...

I won't disagree, except to point out that they spend a lot of money which the datacenter guys want some of.

To be honest, I'm not aware of another application which will really be speed-of-light limited in the UK - although we did actually worry about it in applications like Prepaid Mobile Charging in large countries like Brazil and the USA. And, of course, anywhere which tried to do anything much over satellite connections. For a while some of the attempts to build large ring-based network architectures threatened to be a problem in some places, especially under failure modes where traffic got sent "the long way" round a ring (more from switching delays than true speed-of-light considerations).

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

"You don't want to try to build the network capacity to shift a significant amount of London's data processing demands to, say, Dinorwig."

To Dinorwig, certainly not - that's not the purpose of that installation. There would be better options. London exceptionalism is an entirely different can of worms.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

You don't want to try to build the network capacity to shift a significant amount of London's data processing demands to, say, Dinorwig.

Actually.. that's pretty easy. With a few caveats, like getting people to play nicely with others. So $dayjob stuff was generally planning 144 or 288f cable runs in, around and between countries. Then adding Nokias (ok, Infinera) kit and lighting that up 500Gbps at a time. They even came up with a cost model to make incremental capacity additions easier on the cashflow. But many Tbps are possible, and mostly a challenge to design resiliency and cross-connect policies.

[hoola]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Every airport is a single point of failure.

Just like most public transport hubs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

> Heathrow being a single point of failure

London has five airports, two within the M25.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

And (effectively speaking) zero capacity for any of them to cover for any other, so it's a moot point.

[James Wilson]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

So we should run all the airports at far below capacity to cope with the occasional instance like this where there's an incident that affects one but not the others (surely the most likely cause of problems for airports is weather and that's likely to hit most or all at the same time)? Resilience comes at a price, sometimes it's one worth paying and sometimes not. I suspect most people in cattle class wouldn't want that extra cost and those for whom it is worthwhile will be doing so by finding alternatives for themselves.

[Graham Cobb]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

I count 6... City, Heathrow, Gatwick, Stanstead, Southend, Oxford. Of course, some of these aren't really London airports but they all claim to be! Any I have forgotten?

And that is ignoring the heliports, RAF airports, non-commercial airports, etc

[Helcat]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

London Oxford airport is private - looks like it's non-commercial flights, doubt it can handle international flights other than light aircraft, and definitely isn't a 'London' airport (60ish miles from London).

[Graham Cobb]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Commercial operators occasionally use Oxford - mostly in summer, I think. I think it had a service to Nantes or somewhere around there one time I looked.

It chose to rename itself London Oxford a few years ago!

[PCScreenOnly]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

London Stansted, London Luton.

Just waiting for London Manchest / London Glasgow

Nearly as good as Lympne international airport - when I lived in that area, they started to redo the A2070 - bit odd and it was a really nice road. It was as if they started to build a great new road to the Lympne international airport and then realised a) how small it was b) no longer in use

[James Wilson]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

London Charles De Gaulle?

[David 132]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

>London Charles De Gaulle?

Ah, I see you work for Ryanair's marketing department.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

I saw a message for flights to London - Sydney.

I think that’s pushing it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Just like anywhere else with a runway within 100 miles or so of London: Gatwick, Stansted, Luton, Southend, etc

[OAB]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

You forgot Luton, which is understandable....

[that one in the corner]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

How could anyone forget that?

"Were you truly wafted here from Paradise?” “Nah, mate, Luton Airport!”

[Mage]

Re: I count 6...

Croydon? Or is that too far?

[Smoking_Gun]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

I've always thought we need six runways around London for national resilience.

Therefore additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted make sense rather than building a third runway at LHR.

Of course the airlines \ LHR businesses are desperate to expand at LHR to concentrate operations to their financial advantage but from a UK perspective it's a nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

six runways around London for national resilience

I've always thought we need six runways around London for national resilience.

Think harder. More runways in the London area does little for national resilience. They'd be of marginal use to the 70-80% UK population who live nowhere near London.

Therefore additional runways at Gatwick and Stansted make sense rather than building a third runway at LHR.

Nope. Those two shit-holes won't need extra runways unless they get serious about flight connections. Which isn't the (point to point) business model used by their airline customers. Gatwick's mostly for holiday traffic and Stansted has been captured by the low cost carriers who don't do connecting flights.

Heathrow badly needs more runway capacity. Real airlines want to use it because LHR can offer more possibilities for connecting flights than anywhere else in Europe. Demand exceeds supply => everyone except LHR gets ripped off.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: six runways around London for national resilience

OTOH if Gatwick and/or Stanstead had more runways then they'd be more able to do connecting flights. Your argument is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: six runways around London for national resilience

In principle, yes. In reality, no.

The airlines currently using LGW and STN aren't interested in connecting flights. That's why they use these airports. More runways and more destinations won't change that. Unless it does, the owners of those airports aren't going to spend money on making flight connections a reality. Which would mean they have to convince one of the airline alliances to make LGW or STN a major hub. Good luck with that.

Until they get Skyteam or Star Alliance to make a long-term commitment*, second runways at STN or LGW make little sense. Oneworld won't come to LGW because BA has LHR sewn up tight. BA does of course fly from LGW, but it's mostly point-to-point holiday traffic that they'd move to LHR in a heartbeat if the capacity was there.

Airport hubs are like Internet exchanges. Once you get enough connections, everybody wants to be there and the others are also-rans that will never matter regardless how many new-kids-on-the-block carriers show up.

* And from their PoV, why invest in a London(ish) hub when they already have well established hubs at AMS, CDG and FRA? Which are far nicer airports.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: six runways around London for national resilience

CDG is a horrible airport, I'd take LHR any day, indeed for 30 years of transatlantic travel I always prioritised LHR and AMS. FRA was ok, apart from the long walks everywhere.

I flatly refused to use CDG, even before one of the terminals fell in and killed people.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

"Of course the airlines \ LHR businesses are desperate to expand at LHR to concentrate operations to their financial advantage but from a UK perspective it's a nonsense."

It does make me wonder who will be picking up the tab for "adjusting" the M25, whether that me movings it "burying" it by building the runway over the top. (Leeds/Bradford airport did that with the A658. It's not an especially busy airport, but it can feel bit odd on the rare time you are approaching the tunnel and seeing a bloody great passenger jet on the "bridge" above the road :-) (Locals or commuters might see that frequently for all I know. I only go that way now and then)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Actually got it in one !!!

"minimal infrastructure investment"

The UK is a world leader in 'minimal infrastructure investment' !!!

(Or in the case of HS2 ... inability to do major infrastucture projects ... sort of goes together !!!)

Now Labour is being shot at from all sides as they find they cannot afford to do what multiple previous Govts did not do.

So the game continues until we have 'REAL' collapse of major infrastructure.

:)

[Ommerson]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

The UK is really not the worst for minimal infrastructure spending. For that, you could look to the United States, where even infrastructure maintenance spending is hugely partisan, and there are plenty of examples of catastrophic failure of structures, particularly highway bridges.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

And the difference?

The US has even more privatisation and even less regulation than the UK has..

And pres. Musk and his Russian spy-muppet are busy deepening that malaise even further..

[Locky]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

A bigger question would be "Why has such a reliable part of infrastrucutre suddenly found itself ablaze?"

The answer, is of course, совпадение

[cookiecutter]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

This will be the phrase - minimum viable product that gets thrown around.

I BET you this is somewhere on a Risk Register as an acceptable risk, signed off by someone whose now left. Because you know.....there will never be a power outage this big around Heathrow as the electrical suppliers will obviously have prioritised customer service over immediate profits and "shareholder value"

Thats the problem with this Ponzi scheme of a country and the bullshit that firms like McKenzie, Accenture, Boston Consulting "advise you" about...it's FINE if you're ONE factory implementing this bullshit and the blast radius is small....but the genuine fuckwits who work in these firms, PLUS the 3 month thinking ahead of virtually every CEO go off and implement it everywhere so even something small breaking suddenly affects 100,000s of people...

But those people are just the "little people", who cares if their plans are fucked & their costs are massive or they miss life events because ONE CEO wanted a new house & couldn't be arsed to have a resilient power infrastructure.

Thats why I found VMWare putting up costs by 1000% on AT&T so funny...finally a corporate understood how us customers feel & of course they went crying like little children to the courts when "market forces" hit THEM!

Of course, there will be the "lesson learnt" meetings. More consultancy time spent to advise on how to avoid this in the future & plans drawn up so that it "never happens again". Until the next time Heathrow or BA or some other "unforeseen circumstance" happens and peoples lives are suddenly fucked again with minimum compensation. And of course as per ITIL, the risk register will have been updated with new "acceptable risks".

Genuinely fuck the lot of them

#freeluigi

[Anonymous Coward]

cookiecutter

joined 16 Sep 2024

'Nuff said?

[anothercynic]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

This. Absolutely this. It blows my mind that Heathrow Airport Limited does not consider being the largest airport in the country as 'nationally critical' and as such, doesn't appear to have considered making sure that the terminals have either independent backup power on-site or have independent power supply from a variety of substations in the area.

I absolutely second the government's "WTF Heathrow, how the hell could this happen? Have you not heard about redundant power supply?!" - Heathrow management heads will have to roll over this clusterfuck.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

"Heathrow management heads will have to roll over this clusterfuck."

You must be on really good drugs. Nobody in the UK gets punished or held to account for these clusterfucks. Ever.

[David 132]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

Indeed. I'll be surprised if the senior Heathrow leadership don't get elevated to the Lords after this mess.

[anothercynic]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

"Will have to" does not automatically mean "will". So, no drugs are necessary, just maybe some basic understanding of the English language. ;-)

Agree with you though that there likely won't be any major repercussions, just vapid apologies. Apparently there are already excuses that "this stuff was on the government's desk" - It shouldn't fall to the government to force you to ensure you have resilience!

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

The CEO or whatever of Heathrow has been telling the Beeb he's proud of the way the event was handled. That sounds like a plan to fail successfully carried out.

[anothercynic]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

I know, right? *facepalm*

[Tron]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

They could have a dozen power back ups. If there is a big fire, the fire brigade will shut the place down for some time. Health and safety etc.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Questions will doubtless be asked

If they had geographically diverse backups why would they all be shut down?

From some of the accounts/excuses being given it appears that this must also have been the switching centre for the power distribution network of what's now claimed to be multiple supplies.

[Steve Davies 3]

How?

How did a single point of failure like this come to exist?

Hey terrorists.... see this substation? Take it out and watch the UK go TITSUP....

And to our current useless government... Stop fscking around with benefits that you know deep down will hit those most in need the worst and get our crumbling infrastructure fixed.

NO Critical piece of infrastructure should rely on one source of leccy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

And to our current useless government... Stop fscking around with benefits that you know deep down will hit those most in need the worst and get our crumbling infrastructure fixed.

As Gary Stevenson says, no party will tax the rich, not even ones which are supposedly centre-left parties, all they can do is say they're going to do things more efficiently and cut benefits to save peanuts, which will not stop the flow of money and assets from the working and middle classes and government to the rich. Hence, amongst other things, decaying infrastructure.

A good introduction to his argument here: Gary Stevenson on taxing the rich and why you're getting poorer

[Azamino]

Re: How?

You have got to be trolling us with a Gary "Best Trader at Citi" Stevenson video!

Rebuilding infrastructure is expensive and if the Gov't borrows too much money to fund it then the bond markets will hit them with higher interest rates which could lead to crippling inflation.

As far as taxing the rich goes, well in 2024 the top 1% of income tax payers accounted for 29% of the income tax raised. Investment income is treated differently but if not in an ISA or SIPP wrapper you are going to pay hefty taxes too. If I was still contracting I would be paying 25% corporation tax and then another 8.75% (basic rate), 33.75% (higher rate), and 39.35% (additional rate) on any dividends.

Address the core UK problem of low productivity, stop choosing cheap labour over investment in automation and the economic outlook might change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

It's the private sector which decides to use cheap labour or invest in automation and it has gone for cheap labour. The government acquiesces in this arrangement by setting a low living wage, tax credits to top up pay, and disability benefit (which shot up under Thatcher because the alternative was Thatcher being thrown out in after one or two parliaments). The tax system is also set up to not rock the boat and somehow manages to not tax e.g. eBay and AirBnB but does tax individual sellers on eBay and AirBnB.

If there is a wealth tax in the UK, could you point me to it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

>Address the core UK problem of low productivity,

Uhhh... lol. if the problem is low productivity in the UK this fails to explain the leaps in productivity in the US.

It's almost as if the managerial and owner class across the world has no desire to reward performance until coerced. Not that Americans really deserve any compensation given how they'll pop out kids to die to fertilize the boss' fields.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

"f I was still contracting I would be paying 25% corporation tax and then another 8.75% (basic rate), 33.75% (higher rate), and 39.35% (additional rate) on any dividends."

<speaking as a former contractor myself>

That is not facturally correct.

"I would be paying 25% corporation tax" - nope, the limited company that you setup would be paying Corporation Tax on its profits, not you. These profits (and therefore Corporation Tax) would occur after the company deducted its overheads (including any salary paid to you as an employee and any employers NI if applicable).

You as an employee (not the company, though likely deducted by the company via PAYE) would pay any applicable tax (depending on your Personal Allowance) and NI on your salary and likewise you as a Director of the company would pay any applicable tax (depending on your Personal Allowance & Dividend Allowance) on dividends paid to you by the company, so NOT necessarily "8.75% (basic rate), 33.75% (higher rate), and 39.35% (additional rate) on *any* dividends.".

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: How?

Except under IR35 it waould all be treated as personal income anyway as well as having to provide HMRC with a free VAT collection service.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

IR35, the worst of both worlds, the costs of "employment" but not the benefits (as IR35 is where you're only "an employee for tax purposes", not an employee in general).

I'd rather go back into full-time employment than do an inside-IR35 contract.

[Azamino]

Re: How?

@ the anonymous former contractor. Yes, the company pays tax on profits as it is the legal entity etc but as a one man band who owned, operated and delivered the services sold by said company…. it’s not a stretch to say “I would be paying “.

We lost the battle on IR35 but I have given up on raging about it. I went PAYE, slashed my hours back and took to being a permie like a duck to water.

[R Soul]

Re: How?

the top 1% of income tax payers accounted for 29% of the income tax raised

But that 1% aren't who you think they are. "The rich" pay no income tax, NI, CGT, inheritance tax. They're the nom-doms, kleptocrats and the aristocracy who hide their assets in offshore trusts. Then we have big business who cook the books to dodge what they should be paying in tax. Vodafone was able to make billions in profit one year and somehow pay less in tax than someone on minimal wage. The likes of Starbucks, Google, Amazon and Facebook get away with that year after year - and they are not the only ones.

Those of us who pay tax are ripped off by the ones with the deepest pockets who don't and won't pay their fare share. 'Twas ever thus.

[Pete 2]

Re: How?

Leaving aside the boolean failure but nearby datacenters seem not to be unaffected. you have to wonder how many other airports are similarly vulnerable?

If not specifically a substation, then some other infrastructure SPoF - you know: the ones that every self-respecting disaster recovery plan had identified decades ago.

[Tim Kemp]

Re: How?

All ofthem I expect. There's no reason for an airport to need power backup for all its systems, and they rely on a lot of third party and off site services to work as well. For example air traffic control and coordination, parking, road networks, communications etc.

As a regional outage will affect all of that there's no cost-benefit to keeping anything other than emergency lighting and evacuation, and critical systems, operational as people won't be able to get to the airport, get away from the airport, or fly anywhere anyway.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: How?

"There's no reason for an airport to need power backup for all its systems"

The evidence of Heathrow suggests there is a need for almost all of them to have backup power. OK, so long as nobody opens the door the food in the fridge will keep for a little while but that's about it.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: How?

"For example air traffic control and coordination, parking, road networks, communications etc."

Yes, many seem to be forgetting that this substation was supplying power to the surrounding area, not just or specifically Heathrow Airport. 16,000+ homes were without power, along with all the local business, probably street lights, traffic lights etc. I tried Google and was onto page 8 of the search results before I gave up looking for a story that might talk about the fallout in the immediate area. Maybe the local press covered that, but I'd imagine that if traffic lights were off in the surrounding area, it would not have been helpful.

I see in the latest BBC report that;

"There are also backup diesel generators, and uninterruptible battery-powered supplies which provide enough power to keep safety critical systems such as aircraft landing systems running.

However, when the fire broke out [at] the substation, it was out of action, along with its backup.

Heathrow's main fall-back was the two remaining substations, but the airport's CEO, Thomas Woldbye, told the BBC that it "takes time" to "switch them"."

So, their backup and the backup to the backup were both offline at the time? We really ought to be questioning that. How long and why were they "out of action"? Cost cutting on repair and maintenance? How come primary AND secondary backups were both failed at the same time?

[simonlb]

Re: How?

This is what happens when you privatise a public utility and rig the finances around it to maximise profits paid to the companies running the various parts of the utility (irrespective of how badly they perform), whilst allowing them to do the bare minimum of maintenance to keep it running and making no provision to force them to reinvest any of the profits in any form of modernisation at any time. Chuck in a "regulator" who just sits idly by to let these companies make their obscene profits every quarter, allows them to raise prices because 'reasons' and then finally lets them say to the incumbent government, "You need to give us X £Billion to invest in a modernisation program over the next decade because we've taken all those profits and given them all to our shareholders and executives."

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: How?

You appear to have no idea how badly and inefficiently run things like airports were when they were in public ownership.

What about waiting to find out what actually happened before jumping in with irrelevant party-political moaning?

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: How?

UK airports these days - charging £££ for airport drop offs and pickups - sure, they give a cheaper option of using the long term car parks - at the cost of the extra time needed for the shuttle bus

[Headley_Grange]

Re: How?

Talk to any UK airport CEO and they'll describe their business as a shopping centre with the major inconvenience of an airport. Outside of LHR and LGW most UK airports barely break even on flights and would go bust without the parking charges, shopping and restaurants.

[Dunstan Vavasour]

Shopping Centre

What every other shopping centre dreams of being: a shopping centre where you can charge a fortune for car parking.

With the pesky overhead of all the stuff that goes on airside.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

Airport car parking fees are ludicrously profitable.

Airport car parks here in Aus claim it makes up some 60% of their revenue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

I live in a country with state-run airports (Spain). They seem to be run better than the UK's when I visit. Yes, there are now queues for Britons to enter Spain, but it was the UK which decided to do that.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: How?

Spanish airports are state-owned, but privately run by AENA.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

Aena is a state-owned enterprise and nobody else runs airports except Aena. If there's any real-world practical difference between state-run and this arrangement, then you can barely fit a cigarette paper into the gap.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: How?

The state owns only 51% of AENA, not all of it, it's essentially a private company where the state has a golden share.

It also runs Luton airport, hardly a poster boy for competent management.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

It's still classified as an sociedad mercantil estatal in Spain. And I do expect if margins are going to be cut, cuts will be made at Luton before they are made in Spain.

[B A Lert]

Re: How?

Yes but it is in the UK.

[anothercynic]

Re: How?

Luton seems to be constantly under construction, so at least there's investment there... not least the people mover that the airport funded.

So, it's not all bad.

[PhilBuk]

Re: How?

The majority owner of Heathrow, Heathrow Airport Holdings, is a subsiduary of Spanish company Ferrovial.

Phil.

[anothercynic]

Re: How?

Actually Ferrovial quit in early 2024. The airport is owned by private equity (~23%), pension funds and several sovereign investment funds (Qatar 20%, Saudi 15%, Singapore 11%, China 10%).

It does however not change the fact that the owners of LHR have not invested in improving resilience of the airport.

[James Anderson]

Re: How?

Absolutely. Madrid airport is an architectural gem combing a pleasing appearance with ease of use. Barcelona OK but mediocre. Alicante handles millions of pissed up foreigners ( guilty) on cheapo flights with aplomb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

And you appear to have no idea how badly and inefficiently run things like airports are when they are in private ownership.

In particular, the owners of LHR are notorious for sweating the assets and spending nothing on maintaining the airport's facilities to a reasonable standard. This wouldn't have been allowed if it was in public hands.

Instead of providing a service for public benefit, our airports are now ugly shopping malls crammed with tat attached to eye-wateringly expensive car parks.

[ChrisElvidge]

Re: Ugly shopping malls

I've recently found that asking for assistance (bad legs, hard to walk long distances) at the airport gets round the shopping mall idea by not visiting it unless asked.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

"And to our current useless government... Stop fscking around with benefits that you know deep down will hit those most in need the worst and get our crumbling infrastructure fixed."

Take a look at the disability statistics and claimant numbers. All very well making out that the government are having a witch hunt against the vulnerable, but is it really credible that over one in ten of the population are so disabled as to need state handouts, and that the absolute number has increased by 1.4m in the past three years or so? Given that the rich will always be mobile and can avoid tax, if you think that the current position and rising trend is an outcome you think is agreeable, how much additional tax would you like to pay to cover this? Why is it that almost 20% of the total population in places like Blaenau, Merthyr, Inverclyde, Blackpool are claiming disability benefits, whereas across most of central England its less than 8%?

All very much off topic, and I know that this won't cause you to change your stance, but it is tied up with the crumbling infrastructure issue. There is only so much money to go round. If you want to find (say) another £10bn for an assortment of infrastructure renewal and reinforcements, what would you like to cut instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

I was beginning to think it was just me and those around me with this view point, most news outlets (let's not get bogged down in the whole bias argument) are only viewing this one sided and most people they seem to interview or question about it are against.

I know of several people I've bumped into across life who don't have anything wrong with them but also have zero interest in finding a job. All working age 20s/30s relying on state handouts because the system lets them.

I think the most obvious problem was a BBC News article of a woman who works full time, has autism and claims PIP, so extra £500/month give or take. Openly admitted she spends £0 of that on going towards OT, or counselling, or a therapy dog, or literally anything you could think of that might help her manage her autism. Nope, spends it all on day to day bills, and gets a reduced cost railcard too. Saying she would struggle to pay bills and get about without the help. What about the rest of your colleagues and the population who aren't eligible for PIP? They have to manage don't they.

How many more are like her, claiming for a condition, then using the money intended to be to improve their lives and help manage their condition, and just spending it on bills instead? You could always argue yes, that bills should be lower etc. But having a condition that entitles you to help, then not using that help for that condition, is a whole part of this problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

I'd like to know how her life is improved and her condition is managed if she doesn't pay her bills.

The unspoken rule that everyone knows since tax credits - the welfare state is not just if you're not working, it's there to keep a lid on social problems brought about by most working people's inability to earn a wage which is in line with the cost of living because the government chooses not to raise the minimum wage as it's what their lobbyists are asking for.

If the government forget this and there is another round of benefit cuts, then they do it wilfully knowing the deprivation it will bring with it. Also they're not saving anything as the NHS and police will require more funding to tidy up the mess.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

Welfare benefits are a safety net for people who genuinely need them, and no-one wants to cut it from those genuine claimants.

The problem is the ever-increasing number of people, especially young healthy people, choosing to live on benefits as an alternative to working, and being allowed to self-diagnose a variety of mental ailments which really just come into the category of "life is shitty sometimes" in order to claim benefits to which they are not truly entitled. A clampdown on that is long overdue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

Suck it up buttercup needs to be said to more of these people trying to make claims.

We all support it going towards those who are in genuine need, and for those who will never be able to work and never recover, the proposal scrapping ongoing assessments is a very solid idea,

But the eligibility criteria seriously need tightening to stop people claiming just because life is hard, or the only work options are jobs they don't want to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

"But the eligibility criteria seriously need tightening to stop people claiming just because life is hard"

Tightening? Had a breakdown, only admitted to self after falling apart in GP's office, and haven't been able to get a penny! GP more than happy to give support and paperwork, pills to keep panic attacks mostly in order, but - nah, bugger off scrounger! Will have to retire this year, State Pension two years away.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: How?

It sounds like your "problem" is not not knowing how to "work the system" to get what you need and/or deserve. It's always been the way. Even back when I was a kid, there were families who never seemed to work and yet still had all the mod cons. I feel like there's some sort of sub-culture where this information gets passed around and I'm not privy to it. Although I've been lucky enough to have never needed it

[ChrisElvidge]

Re: Living on benefits

Hasn't this been seen (by some people/politicians) to be a problem for years? "Benefits scroungers" were seen to be around (think demonised) in the '60s.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Living on benefits

Google Ngram says the term started to appear in 1984 and appears to have dramatically taken off after 2008 probably to keep us fighting each other instead of those responsible for the financial crisis.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Living on benefits

Might have been different words used, but it's been around pretty much since the benefits system came into being, long before 84. It was certainly a term used in TV shows of the early/mid 80's which made that specific term more widespread, which almost certainly means the term itself was already being used before the media or politicians latched onto it.

[Roj Blake]

Re: How?

If benefits are such a great alternative to working, why haven't you quit your job?

Two things:

1) Most people on benefits are employed.

2) The amount of benefit fraud is less than the amount not claimed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

How do you know that I'm not retired?

Send us some stats then to back up what you're saying.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: How?

"The problem is the ever-increasing number of people, especially young healthy people, choosing to live on benefits as an alternative to working, and being allowed to self-diagnose a variety of mental ailments"

I've also seem some medical professionals starting to voice concerns of "over diagnosis" specifically in the mental health category. The examples mentioned were the "spectrum" disorders where people are being diagnosed with Aspergers, autism etc., more often as we learn more and progress down the spectrum to the more healthy end and so "labelling" many more people. People who in the past would have just got on with their lives and integrated into society are now beings treated as SEND at school and so not properly integrating due to the labelling. I'm no expert so would have no clue as to if or where a line should be drawn, but there's probably a number of people reading here, me included, that are "detail oriented" (seems to be common in IT) and would quite possibly be diagnosed if we bothered to ask for it, or would have been diagnosed if we were still kids at school.

Note, this is all just my opinion based on stuff I've seen and heard. I am NOT an expert :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sectors/public-services-and-administration/overview-of-the-uks-public-services-sector

Only 18% of employed people in the UK work for the public sector, according to the ONS.

That means 82% work in private sector and have their pay determined by their employers. Yes, the government set a baseline (living wage/working wage) but its on individual companies whether to pay above that or not.

Stop blaming the government for all the problems when the reality is, society is getting lazier and expecting hand outs for excuses that wouldn't have washed 50 years ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

That means 82% work in private sector and have their pay determined by their employers. Yes, the government set a baseline (living wage/working wage) but its on individual companies whether to pay above that or not.

You do realise what tax credits are, why they are necessary, what they do to people's income, and who pays for them, don't you? Because it certainly seems like you don't from your reply.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

Are you aware that tax credits end on 5th April? Because from your reply it certainly seems that you don't.

https://www.gov.uk/working-tax-credit

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

If it were after the 5th of April I'd be talking about universal credit instead of tax credits. How does that take anything away from the point that private companies are paying the legal minimum which is not enough to live on and the state is partly making up for it to try and keep society afloat? The state is in effect part-subsidising employment. You can talk about people expecting hand-outs, but they're already working perhaps two or even three jobs and their salary isn't enough to live on. In 1975 one person could work just one blue collar job, pay a mortgage, and provide for their partner and children, that is not true now. Arguing to the contrary is living in the past and being wilfully blind to the evidence in front of your eyes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

Not really accurate though is it.

If you're just a single person over 21, and work 40 hours a week (which is quite standard) then you're earning £25,396 (based on new national minimum wage from April - £12.21) and that means you're not eligible for any Universal Credit.

Even if you run the old minimum wage through, you're still not eligible for UC.

So if you work full time, and even if private companies are paying the legal minimum, you still won't get a top up from the government. Yes, if you then have children or other various eligibility factors you could claim against those.

But to say the government is part-subsidising employment, when those on full time employment at minimum wage won't get a subsidy/handout/UC (unless they also have other factors) is BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

Are zero hours contracts also not a thing in your world?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

No they aren't, I don't know a single person on a zero-hour contract.

Plenty of employers offer full-time jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

You got your numbers wildly wrong.

2.4m Claiming LCWRA (UC top Up)

3.7m Claiming Pip (this will be part of the LCWRA numbers)

19,000 in Blackpool claiming disability. Population 142,000

Therefore not 1 in 5 or 20% though I agree relatively high. You have to take into account Blackpool is a mecca for heroin addicts and alcoholics like a lot of run down seaside towns. That is the reason the numbers are high. Why don't we put money into local services to help them and also invest in these towns. There you go I solved the problem and no one had to be put into poverty (not they have much anyway) or turn to crime.

This idea that people on disability benefits are living the high life is a load of bollocks. They don't get that much. The ones that do get more are those with severe motability issues. Good luck getting them into work.

Yes we need infrastructure but taking it off the poorest in society is not the way to do it. People don't seem to understand what these changes actually mean. New claims will be cut by £50 a week. In 2030 all claims will be cut by £50 a week plus whatever inflation is not applied between now and then. Kids on DLA (disability living allowance) will turn 18 and get nothing. What will all this achieve other than pushing people into poverty? Absolutely nothing. If someone can't work then they can't work. We saw this with the Tories where they got all the simpletons to have this idea people on benefits were living it up so they could hit them with their cuts.

If they want money change the tax laws. Make the tax dodgers pay tax, join the tax on capital gains to employment tax for example and close the loopholes where corporations pay nothing.

Going after the already poor is disgusting. People like you that moan about it would never be able to survive on what they get now let alone what they will be getting once the cuts are in place. Hang your head in shame for supporting this.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: How?

The people who should be ashamed are those who are perfectly capable of working, but prefer to live off the hard work of others who pay the taxes that fund the benefits system.

Of course there are many people who genuinely need and deserve benefits, and we should support them them. Unfortunately there an increasing number of people who don't take advantage of their publicly-funded education, don't bother to earn any skills or qualifications, and just assume that somebody else will pay their bills if they don't want to work.

Those people need a reminder of how the real world works, and it's a pleasant surprise to see a Labour government grasping the nettle that successive Tory governments ignored for years.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

I can't believe how many people are falling for the government and media propaganda on benefits. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get these benefits as it is? Anecdotal I know but I have a friend who has serious mental health issues and Motability issues due to an accident. They have applied for Pip twice and been turned down both times.

It's extremely naïve to even contemplate the Tories left a benefit system that allowed people to just choose to go on the sick. Have you seen UC? Miss one appointment or don't spend 35 hours a week looking for work and they cut your benefits.

Labour isn't grasping the nettle on anything. They are introducing the same austerity the Tories did by the backdoor. You know who benefits from that austerity? The people and corporations who aren't paying tax because they refuse to go after them. You know the real sickening part is they are going after those that can't fight back. Pensioners and the disabled. Don't worry though because they start at the bottom and will work their way up till they get to the middle class.

[cyberdemon]

Re: How?

Come on, can we close this utterly offtopic thread, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

You're friend sounds unfortunate with the notability side of things if its genuine, but as for mental health, this should not warrant getting PIP or UC.

If you have SMI or ID (examples being downs and fragile X) then yes you should be getting support.

If you just find it a bit hard socially, or you're a bit depressed, or having something mild like autism or what was aspergers, then you are capable of work and should be in it.

"Miss one appointment or don't spend 35 hours a week looking for work and they cut your benefits." And that is exactly how it should be. Benefits are not a right and the view of a seemingly large part of the country is that they are.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: How?

My only encounter with the front end of the service, many decades ago was that those who were employed in it were not really suitable to be employed there. An encounter with some of the back office processing a long time after that did nothing to dispel that.

On second thoughts there was a second encounter with the front end leading to the same conclusion. When my father died I got a letter saying that his pension book (this was in the days when one signed for one's pension) would be sent to Belfast (from Yorkshire) to be forensically examined. Apart from this being no way to address anyone in a bereaved family the lab was where I worked, my boss was also in charge of the document examination department so I was familiar with the document examiners, had never seen piles of pension books around the place and didn't think there were enough of them to offer a UK-wide service.

On third thoughts where was another encounter with the same effect. My employment pensions had clear-cut terms such that if I were to die SWMBO would automatically get paid at half rate. There was nothing in DWP literature to say what would happen to state pension. An enquiry to their pensions "service" resulted in a reply that they were unable to say.

Any attempt to improve the targetting of benefits needs to start by looking at the DWP.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

As you're so against this, you must be of the opinion that nothing should change and we should continue to allow the welfare budget to grow out of control until it reaches the stage where it is bankrupting the country?

People here are not on about taking welfare from those who cannot and will not ever be able to work. Those with severe mental disabilities and severe physical disabilities. Those people should be supported.

We're talking about people who find work a bit hard, or are claiming for PIP for mental health conditions and then using none of the money to actually help or improve their condition. The rules need to be tightened on eligibility and yes, some people may find it hard entering work. But life is hard, you sometimes need to just get on with it.

Not bitch and moan and blame the government whilst also expecting handouts.

For those people economically inactive but not eligible for PIP or any disability benefits, I hear the Army has a number of openings. I'm sure some mandatory service there where they can also learn a trade would set them up nicely, whilst getting paid and becoming economically active at the same time.

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: How?

I have long said that terrorists are really rather stupid people, targeting the high-profile and (at least theoretically) well guarded sites.

Small, cheap incendiary devices on electric substations, train signalling equipment, telephone exchanges, and so on would cause absolute chaos and huge irritation, with just about zero risk.

GJC

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: How?

"would cause absolute chaos and huge irritation, with just about zero risk.

Arson attacks on TGV lines in France - 2024

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd16en19gd3o

[Graham Cobb]

Re: How?

And that was so weird! I was there (for the Olympics) and I, along with everyone else, assumed it was a terrorist attack that would be escalated - but then there was nothing.

Do we know what really happened? Was it really just a protection money threat that the French government quietly paid off?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: How?

Phone calls are even cheaper. It always stuck me that a bomb threat to one particular motorway service station would cause both road ans rail chaos.

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: How?

I lived through a lot of that in the '70s. IRA bomb threats happened all the time in Britain, we'd often get herded out of swimming pools or cinemas. Almost all either fake, or so easily found and dealt with that they might as well have been.

But just enough that got serious to keep everyone on their toes.

GJC

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

Take out a few key train lines en-route to London and do the same to the city

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

Sshhh! You're giving them ideas above their intelligence.

[SundogUK]

Re: How?

"And to our current useless government... Stop fscking around with benefits that you know deep down will hit those most in need the worst and get our crumbling infrastructure fixed."

Getting our 'crumbling infrastructure fixed' will cost money we don't have. 'Fucking around with benefits' is how you get that money.

[Graham Cobb]

Re: How?

No taxing the rich - people like me and pretty much everyone else on this site, I am guessing - is how you get the money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

"Taxing the rich" and "Wealth Tax" are just sound bytes used by politicians trying to gain popularity with poor people. It can never work because the accountants of the wealthy people will simply move the money out of our economy and invest it elsewhere where they pay less tax. And that would be an economic disaster. Not to mention that the richest "people" of all, are not actual individual people but pension funds holding the combined savings of millions of relatively poor people.

As always, the bulk of the tax bill is paid by the lower-middle classes, people with good enough jobs to just about break even every month.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

"the wealthy people will simply move the money out of our economy and invest it elsewhere where they pay less tax. And that would be an economic disaster. "

That sir is utter bollocks. The wealthy simply can't "move their money out of the economy". They can't take half of (say) Shropshire or Knightsbridge with them if they were to bugger off. If they shifted their cash to dodgy tax havens, HMRC could intercept it if the political will was there.

And the truly wealthy pay minimal tax anyway: non-doms like Lord Rothermere for example. Others use slippery accountants and lawyers to stash their loot. It would be far from an economic disaster if these parasites were made to pay their fair share.

BTW pension funds don't pay income tax, national insurance, CGT, inheritance tax, etc on the assets they manage. It's the relatively poor people like you and me who have to pay these when their pensions eventually crystallise.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: How?

One of Gordon Brown's wheezes for taxing the future was to remove the tax-free status of pension funds' dividend income. It was one of the factors resulting in the end of final salary pension schemes.

(Others were reduced interest rates affecting annuity rates and the fact that if HMRC decided that a fund had more than they deemed sufficient the employer must take a contributions break. That meant that the surplus turned into a black hole when the interest rates fell resulting in the likes of the BT pension fund having had a shortfall for years)

[Random person]

Re: How?

"Pension holidays" - we can thank the 1986 Financial Services Act for introducing this idea https://www.professionalpensions.com:8443/feature/2261768/-thatchers-governments-changed-pensions

Every financial advert says that the value of your investments can go down, but pension holidays pretend that values will not go down. Just because a pension fund is currently over funded it does not that the same will be true in 5+ years time.

The 1986 Financial Services Act also stopped employers forcing employees to join the company pension.

We can blame both the Labour and Conservatives for destroying final salary pensions.

Employers were very happy to transfer all the risk to the employees.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How?

> NO Critical piece of infrastructure should rely on one source of leccy.

I seriously have to question the sanity and/or motives that this statement receives more downvotes than upvotes.

Is this site being trolled are are some members lacking in sanity !

[cyberdemon]

Re: How?

Not one of the downvoters you refer to, but I think the arguments are:

The site DOES have more than one point of connection to the grid, but there is a major (grid) bottleneck at North Hyde - this is the DNO (SSEN)'s problem and NGET's problem.

Heathrow itself -should- have had sufficient backup power, but apparently did not. (the grid should be expected to go off sometimes.. it last did so in 2019 iirc)

And even if Heathrow did have more backup power, the blackout was quite widespread, and while they might have been able to land a few planes, they might still have had to divert others due to wider chaos..

It's not so much a Heathrow problem really so much as a UK problem IMHO - decades of privatised utilities have meant a chronic lack of investment, and with the London grid load going through the roof due to datacentres, EVs and the like, the old 1950s supergrid transformers (the one that failed this morning might be 70 years old) can no longer cope, and need replacing right at a time when HV grid transformers worldwide are many times more expensive, and harder to get hold of than ever before, with lead-times stretching to 3 years

[A Non e-mouse]

Really...?

This totally smells. Places like Heathrow have multiple independent connections to the national grid, plus backup power too for critical/safety systems.

There's got to be something else going on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Really...?

Yes, not a UK infrastructure failure. IT'S A CONSPIRACY !!!! Is it the lizard people or is it The WEF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Really...?

No, it will be the far-right for sure. Or the far-left, depending on where you sit politically.

[SundogUK]

Re: Really...?

Come on, it's going to be Russians.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Really...?

Nah. No one fell out of a window or was poisoned with a nerve agent or radioisotope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Really...?

Well it seems like a possibility and anti-terrorism police are now investigating.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Really...?

Well it seems like a possibility and anti-terrorism police are now investigating.

Sensible. Transformers aren't supposed to have UED moments like that, so might have been helped along. Downside to our techno-lifestyle is that more people are aware of CNI, and how to abuse it. So multiple potential nutjobs, from Russia, Ukraine to eco-terrorists protesting about Heathrow expansion. But if it was terrorism, there's a rather large book about to head in their direction. Plus maybe compensation and damages. Here's 20yrs in jail and a bill for a few hundred million..

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Really...?

It won't be Ukrainians even if they did blow up the Nord Stream pipeline

[Judge Dead.]

Re: Really...?

Ukraine don't have any submarines with "USA" written on the side...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Really...?

I checked and there doesn't seem to be any South American politico and drug profiteers due in today so we can chalk that one off.

The critical/safety systems will be just fine as they will have appropriate DR and backup power but check in desks and the rest of the Airport no. As for multiple connections that's tricky when you think about it. Heathrow has it's own substation which is connected directly to the grid (you can see the pylons on google maps). If you want to create redundancy you would need a second substation connected to the same grid. This would not be cheap and with a failure rate of 0.5% to 1% per year of all substations a decision will have been made not to do it either now or when it was originally built. I would guess there is redundancy within the substation itself but the fire seems to have knocked that out as well and that's the failure.

There's nothing else going on. No matter what you do there will always be events out of your control that will bring something down.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Really...?

Exactly. There are many events which could close somewhere like Heathrow for a day (weather, a crash, water or power outage etc.), and their DR planners will have evaluated the most likely and most serious and prioritised them. At the end of the day an airport closed for the day, with no-one hurt, is an inconvenience, that's all.

I would guess that the reason for the big power outage at the moment is that they've had to switch off all power to the substation to protect the firefighters who are extinguishing the burning transformer. Once that's been made safe and cleaned up they should be able to turn power on again, bypassing the damage.

At this scale, transformers are custom-built devices with something like a 2 year waiting list, so it will undoubtedly take some time to get back to normal, but they will have ways to work around the fault.

[SundogUK]

Re: Really...?

"At the end of the day an airport closed for the day, with no-one hurt, is an inconvenience, that's all."

The economic damage is going to be into the billions...

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Really...?

Is it really though? How much business is "lost" by waiting an extra day or two? The passengers, of course, will be wanting compensation for hotels and other transport arrangements etc, but will that be £billions? We often see these huge figures bandied around, such as £million per hour for a major road closure, but I wonder if anyone has ever done real calculations on the actual losses after the fact?

[Like a badger]

Re: Really...?

"and with a failure rate of 0.5% to 1% per year "

I doubt anybody is suggesting all substations need a backup or secondary for random failures, especially when there's considerable resilience built into the national grid, and to a lesser degree the LV distribution system. However, there is still a very valid question why the world's second busiest international airport has a single point of failure? We're not talking about disruption at Cardiff or Ronaldsway, this will have spoiled the day of around 220,000 passengers, resulted in aircraft out of position, diversions, lost connections.

It really is not OK to say "occasional substation failures happen, let's not worry too much to save a few bob". Heathrow is a huge component of the global transport system, the unproductive staff, equipment, plus disruption costs will likely run into the hundreds of millions of pounds, and credible estimates of the economic value to the UK of Heathrow put it around half a billion quid every day. I take the point that safety systems likely have backup power, but that's simply a band aid to avoid catastrophes. All the things like traffic lights, lifts, public lighting, check in terminals, baggage handling, catering (and even retail diversions for the pax) need better power resilience than (say) an equivalent sized town, and even where power loss occurs it shouldn't take out all terminals.

As an early poster noted, this event also advertises the vulnerability of Heathrow to either hostile nations that like to engage in sabotage, or to more domestic troublemakers who think they have some human right to disrupt travel.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Really...?

The first priority in this sort of situation is safety, especially of the firefighters. It wouldn't surprise me if the widespread power outage was an intentional decision to maintain safety while they understood what happened, and prepared a proper and complete response. Automatically switching to a backup system isn't always the right choice, which is why good DR plans always have a person in the loop. Lets wait until we have all the facts.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: Really...?

That's one of the more asinine things I've read for a while. "Let's make up a story! Completely dissociated from the world!"

By the bye, the backup system kicked in immediately and was originally designed to provide full power immediately. You know, as "backup".

But the climate cultists demolished the original generator in ~2012 and installed a "green" "apocalypse-averting" Bio!Mass! planet saviour. Biomass generators take hours to spin up, they're slower than coal, they are not insta-backup capable.

Heathrow got lucky for a long time and didn't need it.

As soon as the real-world intervened, the meme-compliant nonbackup plan failed catastrophically.

Simple engineering reality. Grownup-town.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Really...?

"If you want to create redundancy you would need a second substation connected to the same grid."

How about two or three smaller substations, each with its own connection to the grid, each supplying part of the load and emergency generators to cover the outage of one of them? Or separate substations for each terminal?

The fact is unavoidable: this was a single point of failure, just the sort of thing that should have been eliminated in the planning for previous expansions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Really...?

> How about two or three smaller substations, each with its own connection to the grid, each supplying part of the load and emergency generators to cover the outage of one of them? Or separate substations for each terminal?

But a failure of one of those substations still means that flights would have to be cancelled because the remaining terminals do not have enough spare capacity in terms of stands to cover for the unusable terminal.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Really...?

The remaining capacity would be much less than zero. As the old saying goes, half a loaf is better than no bread.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Really...?

Shit!!! "more!.

[hoola]

Re: Really...?

Where does the feed for that come from?

There power demand is fuch that it is quite challenging to provide 100% redundancy or resilience.

[R Soul]

Re: Really...?

"No matter what you do there will always be events out of your control that will bring something down."

This was not one of them. A major outage of the electricity supply at LHR is a reasonably foreseeable incident => the airport owners should have had adequate backup arrangements in place, >1 connection to the grid, no single points of failure, etc, etc.

Besides, the BA IT meltdown a few years ago should have been a warning to everyone at LHR to have viable and tested contingency plans.

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: Really...?

They *DID* have, but then they demolished it and replaced it with a Climate!Change! version to prevent the model apocalypse.

i.e., demolished the existing diesel turbine, installed a BioMass turbine.

Problem: diesel cuts in immediately; biomass boilers take hours to come up to speed. So diesel works for insta-backup and biomass does *NOT* work for insta-backup.

Analogous to acknowledging a need for PeakingPower, then tearing out your gas plant and replacing it with coal. Only more so: coal spins up faster.

They got lucky and had absolutely no problems until they tried to actually use it.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Really...?

You wouldn't like to hear the representative from the Institute of Civil Engineers on the radio this morning, proclaiming that the solution to Heathrow's backup issues is...

More solar panels and wind turbines!

She'd better have been trolling..

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: Really...?

Oh dear lord

[Random person]

Re: Really...?

Thanks for repeating Richard Tice's and The Telegraph's claims.

The Biomass system doesn't provide power to the entire airport.

> The 10MW Combined Heating and Power (CHP) system - the largest ‘own use’ renewable energy installation in the UK - will open later this year. Prior to serving T2, due to open in Spring 2014, the biomass energy plant will provide base heating and power to Terminal 5.

https://mediacentre.heathrow.com/pressrelease/detail/4079

[W.S.Gosset]

Re: Really...?

Thanks for struggling to deflect by raising something completely separate from the backup arrangements but pretending it's the same thing because "looklook one of words same".

>Richard Tice

Had to google that one.

(Torygraph->paywall->no idea)

YOU may have a personal obsession with local politics but that does not mean that everyone else subsumes reality to ingroup-dominance games, nor does your private world alter reality.

[lsces]

Re: Really...?

Having driven around Heathrow many times while living and working in that area 50 years ago, I find it no surprise that all of the power comes from north of the airport. There is nothing south that could supply the power and I can remember that discussion when planning other projects in that area. 50 years on we should have solved that problem? Probably, but given they have now been given the go ahead for a large increase in the load - also to the north of the airport - it will be fun find THAT power ...

[Like a badger]

Re: Really...?

"here is nothing south that could supply the power"

Actually there's a 400kV line coming into West Weybridge substation south of Heathrow, and from there it links into the outer London 275kV ring that runs past Heathrow and links to the 400kV substation to the North (Iver), with 275kV substations south of Heathrow at Laleham and Chessington. Obviously there's the usual questions of utilisation and the huge complexities of planning electricity transmission and distribution, but there's certainly possibilities if the problem is only having a northerly feed.

[anthonyhegedus]

Re: Really...?

I have it on good authority that it's a giant mutant star-goat that did it.

[Rob Daglish]

Re: Really...?

Really? I thought there was a planet going to crash into us. Or were we going to crash into it? Something like that anyways...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Really...?

Are you new to Britain? Mediocrity is a national sport.

[A Non e-mouse]

Re: Really...?

And now the National Grid confirm there wan't a single point of failure in the electrical supply:

bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdjy4m0n1exo

[Pascal Monett]

Redundancy has a cost

Had there been a second substation built ten years years ago, I'll bet anything that four (or six) years ago somebody would have complained that it was useless and its maintenance costs would be cut.

And we'd be right here again today.

NASA (and ESA/JAXA/etc) are the only ones who understand the true utility of redundancy and who are ready to support the cost of it, because when your probe is a billion miles away, you'd better hope that you have a functional backup plan if something goes wrong.

[really_adf]

Re: Redundancy has a cost

"NASA (and ESA/JAXA/etc) are the only ones who understand the true utility of redundancy and who are ready to support the cost of it, because when your probe is a billion miles away, you'd better hope that you have a functional backup plan if something goes wrong."

This seems a bit unfair: redundancy is prevalent in human safety-critical areas, though arguably too often only due to lessons written in blood. The on-board systems of aircraft are an obvious, fairly topical example but even everyday things like "mirror, signal, manoeuvre" incorporate redundancy.

[Alister]

Re: Redundancy has a cost

"The on-board systems of aircraft are an obvious, fairly topical example"

Except if you are Boeing, apparently.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Redundancy has a cost

Insurance is cheaper than redundancy. Shareholders don't care if the airport is out of action as long as the underwriter cuts them a cheque to cover their costs and lost profits.

This is why grown up countries ensure the state is the sole or majority shareholder of airports, even in the Land of the Freemarket where the busiest airport is owned by the Atlanta state's Department of Aviation.

So who's really to blame? Thatcher, of course.

[Jaded_CTO]

Dry run?

Not one for conspiracy theories but, Statnett in Norway had an unused transformer attacked a week or so ago causing a 60 tonne oil leak - will be interesting to find out what the cause of this fire was. Other than closing down Heathrow the effect on air travel will be enormous given all the diverted and cancelled flights

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dry run?

Even it the Heathrow incident were sabotage, chances of government letting that be known are nil. Governments struggle to hide sabotage with things like undersea cables mind you, but it's also going on elsewhere. I know one major UK based manufacturing businesses that's active across the world, and their operations were hugely disrupted by a fire at a supplier. And then a fire at the standby supplier at the other end of the country. And the components in question are already affected by supply chain constraints due to sanctions on Russia. Mysterious that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Dry run?

I am sure there is a Trump supporting US supplier who has “high quality” and expensive parts available to order, only problem is they are now her near as good or reliable as the one they are using and hence require an expensive maintenance service…

[Anonymous Coward]

TITSUP

Total Inability To Support Upward Planes

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: TITSUP

Supporting the downward ones is probably more of a concern.

[cyberdemon]

Re: TITSUP

Transmission Incident Totally Shags Urban Prosperity

(yes ok, the planes are shagged too)

[0laf]

Enshittification even applies to airports. Heathrow adhereing to the minimum viable product rule that the shareholders demand.

Why bother putting in redundant power supplies if the costs of an outage are covered by others or insurers.

If Putin didn't putin the guys up to taking out the substation he'll certainly have the idea now.

[anthonyhegedus]

Airports have already been enshittified to the max and have been so for decades. You can't get much more of a fill of bullshit than at an airport

[Anonymous Coward]

A competent and ambitious central government would give up on Heathrow, turn it into a new village for London and use the proceeds to fund a proper hub airport 30-40 minutes up HS2. It could be right next door to new central government campus city modelled on Canberra. A highly profitable move for taxpayers funded by selling the Whitehall estate to the highest bidder.

[R Soul]

You lost me at "a competent and ambitious central government".

What is this mythical beast?

[Lazlo Woodbine]

Die Hard 2

Isn't this essentially the plot of Die Hard 2; Terrorists cut the power to an airport, so they can divert the plane of a major drug dealer.

Should we be watching for a plane flying a drug lord to a CIA blacksite?

[Roger Kynaston]

Enquiring minds

Some of us want to know if a shifty guy with a bicycle was seen last night and whether there is a large bulliion delivery due today?

Icon to make it clear. We could do with a sledgehamer one really.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Enquiring minds

Da. We just came to see the historic North Hyde substation, we hear it has erm, 275-kilovolt spires!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Enquiring minds

Hang on lads, I've got a plan....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Enquiring minds

He was only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!

[Mr.Nobody]

Slough Trading Estate is pretty far away from the substation, and it has it's own power plant.

The DCs in Slough are all powered by the local biomass plant there. I am not sure why the substation on the other side of LHR would cause them to have problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Slough Trading Estate is pretty far away from the substation, and it has it's own power plant.

> The DCs in Slough are all powered by the local biomass plant there

Doesn't work like that. The DCs are supplied by the grid and - independently - the biomass plant supplies the grid. It's just historical reasons that they're co-located geographically.

[NXM]

my theory...

... is that just like the documentary "The Italian Job" someone threw a push bike onto the substation wires. Just wait for reports of a load of gold to have disappeared from Heathrow.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: my theory...

or this?

Ok, not the actual airport, but it still has Heathrow in the name and is next door.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe a drone crashed in to it.......

[Barrie Shepherd]

The aftermath will add to the 20 Billion 'black hole' for Rachael to find funds to fill.

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to be some confusion. Heathrow Airport Ltd isn't critical economic infrastructure. It's a business with shareholders to prioritise.

[CowHorseFrog]

Yet another perfect example and the question needs to be asked.

Why not simply cut down on all that stupid travel. Saves time, saves pollution, and gives people more time to do somethibg better than sitting in a tin box.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a horrible suggestion.

Do you want to stop Britons from ever seeing the sun?

[CowHorseFrog]

You fail to see the big picture.

How many hours do you waste commuting, in traffic or travelling ?

If you didnt waste all that time with that bullshit you would have weeks of holiday time and there would be no need to travel by plane. Roads would have less traffic, no more business travellers pretending to be important..

Everybody wins, even plane travellers.

[Lord Elpuss]

"How many hours do you waste commuting, in traffic or travelling ?"

Waste, practically none these days. My work agenda allows me to choose my times of travel.

When I do drive, I enjoy it. Taking the family on road trips. Going with the wife to a restaurant that's a half-hour by car, but more than two hours by public transport. Hitching a trailer and hauling something big or helping out the neighbors. Just going for a drive with the top down and enjoying the solitude.

The fact that you repeatedly fail to see any of this make me pity you a little. Not much though, because I love my life and your bitterness is your problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the difference ?

I work in a datacentre.

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: What's the difference ?

How much is all this modern world saving you in time so you can have more holidays ?

[Judge Mental]

Third Runway needed.

This proves a third runway is needed, just not at Heathrow. Having an alternate location to take the load would have reduced the impact.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Third Runway needed.

A third runway at Heathrow would've made zero difference. Heathrow itself is the weakest link due to its monopoly on flights. There are plenty of underutilized regional airports that could reduce the single point of failure if policy changes redistributed demand around the UK. The CMA urgently needs to investigate this airport's stranglehold on the market.

[CowHorseFrog]

Re: Third Runway needed.

Yeh like building MORE roads always improves traffic.

Thats why we have no traffic jams today.

[Lord Elpuss]

Re: Third Runway needed.

If you care that much about the environment you could try holding your breath for an hour; save some oxygen.

[harmjschoonhoven]

data centers going off grid

https://www.reuters.com/technology/big-techs-data-center-boom-poses-new-risk-us-grid-operators-2025-03-19/ gives an interesting insight into this issue.

[Nursing A Semi]

Easy Lesson for Heathrow

Apparently they connect to three substations, with the remaining two acting as backup in case the supply from one fails. Weirdly though, it would seem to take the best part of a day to bring the backup supply into a state to cover for the dead "well toasty anyway" substation.

Easy lesson guys, if your backup can't take over straight away it isn't really a backup.

[Nifty]

All Safety systems...GO

Air traffic control... GO

Emergency lighting and arrivals/departures boards... GO

Booking terminals and IT systems in general... GO

Duty free shops display units and heated loo seats in the VIP suite... STOP!

OK let's close the airport for 24 hours.

[david 12]

“To maintain the safety of our passengers"

Perhaps, should have had more natural lighting at terminal?

Recent Nottingham power outage. https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/19/nottingham_outage_sitrep/

"We're told a risk assessment has been carried out and it was deemed safe to hold the meeting as the room is on the ground floor and lit by natural light,"