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Power outage at Heathrow.

Andy_Ross

Penultimate Amazing
Andy_Ross
Joined
Jun 2, 2010
Messages
54,427
If Simon Calder's face you see
Then on your flight you will not be
 
I got caught up in this. I was on a flight from Riyadh back to the UK, for the Ramadan/Eid break. They woke us up for breakfast, then suddenly stopped serving. Then we got the news about Heathrow. They diverted to Amsterdam, and then basically abandoned us: not one member of BA staff there, no assistance whatsoever. I'm having to overnight in Amsterdam, and fly back (to Bristol) tomorrow morning, after booking both flight and hotel room myself. Not a bad place to pass some time, though....:cool:
 
The Met counter-terrorism police are investigating the cause of the fire, but there is, as yet, no suggestion of foul play.

www.theguardian.com

Counter-terror police leading inquiry into ‘unprecedented’ Heathrow fire

Met officers say no immediate indication of foul play as passengers face days of disruption from electrical substation blaze
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com


I'll ask my son next week to see if there's any info not available to the general public by then.
 
Carrot Flower King said:
Have any gammons blamed Starmer and the government yet?

Just to show the rest of us that they don't know who owns and runs Heathrow...
Click to expand...


I've seen several posts claiming it's Miliband's fault because of his Net Zero lunacy.

They got rid of their backup diesel generators to comply with Labour green legislation apparently

Examples

GB News
@GBNEWS
'It appears that Heathrow had changed its backup systems in order to be, wait for it...net zero!'
Richard Tice MP exclusively reveals information he's obtained regarding the closure of Heathrow Airport.
Click to expand...

Darren Grimes
@darrengrimes_
Apparently the backup generator for the power plant near Heathrow is electric, not diesel, meaning it’s currently about as much use as a chocolate teapot. This fire has wiped billions off of the British economy, but that’s alright, eh? As long as we can say we’re going green.
Click to expand...

BDL_Active
@English_blood_
So, get this, #Heathrow got rid of their diesel backup generators for, wait for it “a more greener option to meet sustainability targets” AND IT TOTALLY FAILED. This GREEN decision has impacted airlines AROUND THE WORLD.
Click to expand...
 
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Cosmic Yak said:
I got caught up in this. I was on a flight from Riyadh back to the UK, for the Ramadan/Eid break. They woke us up for breakfast, then suddenly stopped serving. Then we got the news about Heathrow. They diverted to Amsterdam, and then basically abandoned us: not one member of BA staff there, no assistance whatsoever. I'm having to overnight in Amsterdam, and fly back (to Bristol) tomorrow morning, after booking both flight and hotel room myself. Not a bad place to pass some time, though....:cool:
Click to expand...
Hardly unexpected alas
 
Cosmic Yak said:
It is actually their responsibility to arrange onward flights, and for accommodation for overnight stays.
But, hey, keep making excuses for them. I'm a thousand euros out of pocket, but, hey, they were 'spread a little thin', so it's all good, right?
Click to expand...
Not really.
The situation is not of the airline's, except in that they're operating to an airport with no contingency planning for a power outage.

If you are stranded then you are entitled to 'care and assistance' while stuck; this generally means refreshments, communications, accommodation and transportation.
If the airline tells you to 'make alternative travel arrangements' and to claim back the cost later, then you are limited to "reasonable" costs. They are not specifically obliged to make such arrangements.

Airlines do not have to pay compensation when disruption is caused by 'extraordinary circumstances' outside their control. Such as thisobe

Check your travel insurance.
 
Darat said:
It’s been lovely here today, its amazing how much we grow accustomed to the noise from flights from and to Heathrow, it’s only when there are no flights we realise how noisy they are.
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I hope you made the most of it, they're going to allow night flights while they catch up.
 
Re: The backup generators, they were working as far an ensuring radio communications and lights on the airfield was concerned, and in an emergency they would have been able to accept landing aircraft. It was just about everything else in and around the airport that couldn't be run off them. It's a point that has been raised numerous times over the course of the day, that Heathrow for all intents and purposes is a small town.
 
Yup to almost all of the posts above.

People to seem to think that backup diesels generators for Heathrow will occupy a small shed or something. But Heathrow's peak load is more than 80MW*, the sort of power that can only be supplied by the very largest marine diesels, like this 80MW behemoth, the world's largest.

Obviously, no airport is going to invest in such as machine. It would be like the city of Perth (Scotland) buying a backup marine diesel "just in case".

With regards to the cause of the fire, the indications from the police at this point are no suggestion of foul play. Transformers do catch fire, as a quick trip to YouTube will show you. They contain tens of thousands of litres of insulating oil, and once that catches fire, they will burn merrily. Usually, the entire substation needs to be shut down to allow firefighting, which seems to have been the case.

The major mystery for me is why a fire at one substation would shut the entire airport. Heathrow is fed from a number of different Grid Supply Points for obvious reasons, and these GSPs deliver power to small substations scattered around its perimeter. Here is but one of them. I think most of the power, but not all, is coming ultimately from Iver 275kV substation, and supplies were intact there. North Hyde substation, which was the one with the transformer fire, normally supplied only the northeast corner of Heathrow. I don't understand what happened to the others.


* I haven't been able to find Heathrow's peak load, but somewhere I found that in 2016, its annual electricity demand was 485GWh, which suggests an average of 55MW, the peak load obviously being somewhat higher, and demand in any case has probably grown since 2016.
 
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OK, the BBC is reporting that Heathrow was not connected to its southern GSP Laleham (which itself is fed from Laleham 275kV substation), and only from North Hyde GSP. This is a major blunder by Heathrow, and there will be questions that need to be answered.
 
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BillC said:
OK, the BBC is reporting that Heathrow was not connected to its southern GSP South Laleham (which itself is fed from Laleham 275kV substation), and only from North Hyde GSP. This is a major blunder by Heathrow, and there will be questions that need to be answered.
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They obviously need some DEI. A bit of diversity in their power options would have helped.
 
Darat said:
It’s been lovely here today, its amazing how much we grow accustomed to the noise from flights from and to Heathrow, it’s only when there are no flights we realise how noisy they are.
Click to expand...
A London friend was comparing the silence to covid times.

Another London friend is "stuck" in Düsseldorf, loving it, and doesn't want to come home.
 
Alex Armstrong a presenter on GB News said

27 eco-zealots from Just Stop Oil were arrested last year for plotting to disrupt British airports.

Many others arrested throughout the years for airport disruption.

Why are the MSM banging out this massive reach of a conspiracy theory rather than connecting very simple dots?

War drum banging, plain and simple.
Click to expand...
 
Orphia Nay said:
A London friend was comparing the silence to covid times.

Another London friend is "stuck" in Düsseldorf, loving it, and doesn't want to come home.
Click to expand...
Well I am reluctant to travel to London too....


Wrt to independent power supplies. There are options other than diesel IC.
If peak load is 55MW then cutting non-essential uses should bring that down by around one-third. Say 36MW.

We've used 6MW containerised gas turbine gensets for data centres. Each unit is two TEU. And there are models that run happily on kerosene, minimising fuel transport issues.
 
Well, that'll teach me. I thought, by sharing how the start of my holiday was disrupted, there might be a little sympathy, and possibly even useful advice, from my fellow forumites.
What I got instead was a whole load of flak, saying the airline was right to refuse to comply with their obligations, that I was a fool to expect any kind of information or assistance from them, and that, in any case, I shouldn't be flying at all, ever.
Lesson learned, guys. No sharing of details about my actual life, and only scorn and mockery should be expected here. Go screw yourselves: I'm going back to my holiday.
 
Cosmic Yak said:
Well, that'll teach me. I thought, by sharing how the start of my holiday was disrupted, there might be a little sympathy, and possibly even useful advice, from my fellow forumites.
What I got instead was a whole load of flak, saying the airline was right to refuse to comply with their obligations, that I was a fool to expect any kind of information or assistance from them, and that, in any case, I shouldn't be flying at all, ever.
Lesson learned, guys. No sharing of details about my actual life, and only scorn and mockery should be expected here. Go screw yourselves: I'm going back to my holiday.
Click to expand...

You seemed to be enjoying it.

Cosmic Yak said:
I got caught up in this. I was on a flight from Riyadh back to the UK, for the Ramadan/Eid break. They woke us up for breakfast, then suddenly stopped serving. Then we got the news about Heathrow. They diverted to Amsterdam, and then basically abandoned us: not one member of BA staff there, no assistance whatsoever. I'm having to overnight in Amsterdam, and fly back (to Bristol) tomorrow morning, after booking both flight and hotel room myself. Not a bad place to pass some time, though....:cool:
Click to expand...
 
Nigel posted a deliberate lie about it today


Nigel Farage MP
@Nigel_Farage
Heathrow Airport had no diesel generator backup. It was removed as part of their drive to net zero.

Dubai Airport and many military bases do have diesel generators and their aircraft would have continued flying.

The truth about this disaster is being withheld.
Click to expand...
 
What is this idiotic obsession with diesels? There are, as I pointed out, other options.
 
Nuclear power stations use gas turbine generators to maintain power in the loss of mains supply, typically in the 17MW range. They are incredibly expensive to maintain for 5-minute readiness on the chance that they'd be used once in their lifetime.
 
The airport itself has emergency power running. The real question is why was there only one way in for power for the terminals. Standard practice for a large site like this would be to have two external high voltage lines to feed the client.
 
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a_unique_person said:
The airport itself has emergency power running. The talk question is who was there only sooner way in for power for the terminals. Standard practice for a large site like this would be to have two external high voltage lines to feed the client.
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Agreed, and such a connection existed, via Laleham to the south. It appears it was disconnected, or at least unavailable at the time. The question is why, and I'm really hoping Heathrow hadn't decommissioned it to save on use of system charges.
 
a_unique_person said:
The airport itself has emergency power running. The real question is why was there only one way in for power for the terminals. Standard practice for a large site like this would be to have two external high voltage lines to feed the client.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Thad’s the big question.

On LHR, we flew in for the third time just over a week ago. We were out of that terminal and on the tube within 20 minutes. Far more efficient than Australian international airports.
 
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