National Grid chief says Heathrow had ‘enough power’ despite fire shutdown

National Grid’s CE has insisted the electricity transmission network remained capable of feeding enough power to Heathrow throughout the airport’s closure last week, as airlines’ anger over the decision to shut down for nearly 24 hours grew. In his first comments since the fire on Thursday night, John Pettigrew told the Financial Times that while an “unprecedented” blaze knocked out the North Hyde substation, two others serving Heathrow were working throughout the incident. “There was no lack of capacity from the substations,” he said. “Each substation individually can provide enough power to Heathrow.” Heathrow closed for nearly all of Friday following the substation fire, causing disruption that is expected to cost airlines tens of millions of pounds. More than 1,300 flights were cancelled, affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers. The airport said that, while it is able to run full operations with power from only two substations, it had to “reconfigure” its internal electrical networks to safely make the switch. Heathrow’s CE Thomas Woldbye said over the weekend that the airport also had to safely restart thousands of its systems — from baggage belts to air bridges. He appeared to shift some blame to the power industry as he told the BBC that Heathrow would assess if it needed “a different level of resilience if we cannot trust that the grid around us is working the way it should”. But Pettigrew said: “Two substations were always available for the distribution network companies and Heathrow to take power.” He added it was a “question for Heathrow” as to why it took the action it did. “Losing a substation is a unique event — but there were two others available,” he said. “So that is a level of resilience.”<br/>