A couple of months ago, a fire in a substation left without electricity To a part of London and temporarily paralyzed Heathrow airport. A month later, the Iberian Peninsula suffered a mass blackout. Two incidents separated by kilometers, but united by the same question: how fragile is the electricity grid?
More than is thought. The energy expert, Simon Gallagher has addressed this topiccategorically discarding the theories of sabotage or systematic negligence relying on data provided by UK Power Networks (UKPN) and Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN). According to Gallagher, the failures in transformers are not only common, but also expected in such a complex system. UKPN, for example, reported about 400 failures of transformers a year, although only about 30 affect more than 500 customers. Although these failures can affect from small transformers in rural posts to large urban units, the figure has remained stable.
Is it stable? Simon Gallagher is based on The 2024 UKPN annual reportwhere the average customer was without electricity just 29 minutes throughout the year, which is equivalent to an availability of the service of 99,994%. This level of reliability is the result of years of investment and continuous improvement. Since 2010/11, UKPN has reduced its lost minutes by client by 55% and interruptions by 43%.
A very controlled system. The British electrical system is designed with a high degree of resilience. When a component fails, there are alternative routes through which electricity can be redirected, avoiding interruptions. This capacity is complemented with automatic failure detection technologies, which isolate the breakdowns in seconds and, in many cases, restore the supply without human intervention, Thanks to self -refrarable networks or Self-Healing Grids. To this is added Predictive maintenancewhich allows to replace or repair components before they fail, and a hierarchy of equipment that minimizes the impact of the failures: a failure on a low -load transformer affects little, while high voltage those receive greater protection. This robust architecture It is backed by the Riio-Ed2 regulatory frameworkpromoted by Ofgem, which forces distributors to maintain strict standards of reliability and response.
So the blackout of Spain? While the British electrical system relies on a hierarchical network with high redundancy, predictive maintenance and self -repair technologies, the recent blackout in the Iberian Peninsula has shown that the resilience of the Spanish system needs to evolve in another direction. The more you know about the incident, less weight has the initial explanation focused on the lack of inertia by renewables.
On the other hand, the absence of distributed storage, The lack of micro -redes capable of temporarily isolation of the main system and low capacity of local response. The blackout, even in the absence of official information so far we know that it was not due to a generation failure but to A chain disconnectionaggravated by a centralized architecture that could not contain the domino effect. This has revived the debate about the need to modernize the network; In that sense, the British model not only stands out for its technical robustness, but also for its regulatory anticipation against high renewable penetration scenarios.
How invisible it works. In a world where what fails attracts more attention, it is worth remembering how extraordinary that, despite hundreds of daily technical failures, electricity continues to reach our homes without interruption. As Simon Gallagher concluded: “Everything fails … and yet the lights remain on.”
Image | Senate Agr
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