Skybird
03-22-25, 10:06 AM
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/kolumnen/aus-aller-welt/uk-blackout-am-flughafen-heathrow/
A fire in a substation paralyzes London's Heathrow Airport – and reveals the fatal vulnerability of "climate-neutral" infrastructure. While hundreds of thousands of people sit in the dark and planes are diverted, the proud biomass emergency power system fails miserably – a total outage that was foreseeable.
Sabotage or not: This was a disaster that was foreseeable. One of the world's largest airports was paralyzed. At the same time, the disastrous impact of the green net-zero target on CO₂ is becoming clear. Nothing was working at London Heathrow Airport. A fire in the North Hyde substation in West London disrupted the power supply, and all flight operations had to be suspended. At the same time, the entire Hayes and Hounslow districts, with several hundred thousand residents, were without power. Households and businesses experienced a kind of blackout on the island where the Greens are so proud of its many wind turbines.
As impressively demonstrated on the aircraft tracking portal Flightradar24, around 1,400 flights were affected and had to be diverted. Large A380 aircraft flying from Qantas from Australia to London, for example, landed in Paris instead of London after their long flight halfway around the world, and the passengers were chauffeured to England by bus and train. Planes from the United States were already turning around over Greenland, while others managed to land at alternate airports in Great Britain, such as Gatwick. But these quickly became overcrowded. Passengers were advised not to go to the airport at all.
As early as Friday night, residents could see high flames blazing from a transformer in the substation, which contains 25,000 liters of oil. The fire department, which arrived on the scene, attempted to foam down the fire. But first, the entire plant was paralyzed, and the power supply to the airport – as well as to the district – was cut off.
It's astonishing that such important infrastructure doesn't have multiple power lines, but apparently only a single one. Furthermore, there was apparently no way to supply the affected region via other lines from the national transmission grid. The North Hyde substation was apparently the only possible connection.
The airport's CEO stated that emergency power generators were available for flight operations. However, these would not be sufficient to power the entire airport, but only for flight operations and the lighting of the runways and taxiways so that aircraft could still taxi safely. The airport itself requires the power needs of a small district – this is no longer feasible with the emergency power generators.
It has since emerged that the emergency power supply no longer operates with diesel generators, but with supposedly "environmentally friendly" energy. The airport had converted its emergency systems from a diesel generator to power generation from a biomass power plant. The T2 Energy Center at Heathrow, opened in 2012, heats Terminals 2 and 5 with 25,000 tons of wood chips per year, which come from forests in the United Kingdom. This is supposedly sustainable, according to the British. But this "green" energy center was unable to provide backup power. According to Richard Tice, vice-chairman of Reform UK, the biomass generator apparently failed because it was designed to operate only in conjunction with the National Grid. It was apparently unable to provide power independently of the national grid.
The Telegraph quotes airport officials as saying that a backup power system using fossil-fuel diesel generators would not have been able to maintain the power supply. This claim raises questions about Britain's resilience to attacks in a net-zero future.
Let's take that in: The devastating fire with the complete outage reveals that one of the world's most important airports operates without backup energy systems – yet proudly emphasizes how carbon-free it is.
Meanwhile, the British government emphasizes that the cause of the fire was probably not sabotage. It believes it was an accident – anything else would be too embarrassing. Specialized investigators are continuing to examine the scene, they say. "Due to the location of the substation and the impact this incident had on critical national infrastructure, the London Police Counter Terrorism Command is leading our investigation into this matter," the police said.
It should be added: sabotage – not by a foreign power, but rather from within, by "green" parties who, under the guise of environmental friendliness, are destroying a fail-safe energy supply. But we know that from Germany too.
A fire in a substation paralyzes London's Heathrow Airport – and reveals the fatal vulnerability of "climate-neutral" infrastructure. While hundreds of thousands of people sit in the dark and planes are diverted, the proud biomass emergency power system fails miserably – a total outage that was foreseeable.
Sabotage or not: This was a disaster that was foreseeable. One of the world's largest airports was paralyzed. At the same time, the disastrous impact of the green net-zero target on CO₂ is becoming clear. Nothing was working at London Heathrow Airport. A fire in the North Hyde substation in West London disrupted the power supply, and all flight operations had to be suspended. At the same time, the entire Hayes and Hounslow districts, with several hundred thousand residents, were without power. Households and businesses experienced a kind of blackout on the island where the Greens are so proud of its many wind turbines.
As impressively demonstrated on the aircraft tracking portal Flightradar24, around 1,400 flights were affected and had to be diverted. Large A380 aircraft flying from Qantas from Australia to London, for example, landed in Paris instead of London after their long flight halfway around the world, and the passengers were chauffeured to England by bus and train. Planes from the United States were already turning around over Greenland, while others managed to land at alternate airports in Great Britain, such as Gatwick. But these quickly became overcrowded. Passengers were advised not to go to the airport at all.
As early as Friday night, residents could see high flames blazing from a transformer in the substation, which contains 25,000 liters of oil. The fire department, which arrived on the scene, attempted to foam down the fire. But first, the entire plant was paralyzed, and the power supply to the airport – as well as to the district – was cut off.
It's astonishing that such important infrastructure doesn't have multiple power lines, but apparently only a single one. Furthermore, there was apparently no way to supply the affected region via other lines from the national transmission grid. The North Hyde substation was apparently the only possible connection.
The airport's CEO stated that emergency power generators were available for flight operations. However, these would not be sufficient to power the entire airport, but only for flight operations and the lighting of the runways and taxiways so that aircraft could still taxi safely. The airport itself requires the power needs of a small district – this is no longer feasible with the emergency power generators.
It has since emerged that the emergency power supply no longer operates with diesel generators, but with supposedly "environmentally friendly" energy. The airport had converted its emergency systems from a diesel generator to power generation from a biomass power plant. The T2 Energy Center at Heathrow, opened in 2012, heats Terminals 2 and 5 with 25,000 tons of wood chips per year, which come from forests in the United Kingdom. This is supposedly sustainable, according to the British. But this "green" energy center was unable to provide backup power. According to Richard Tice, vice-chairman of Reform UK, the biomass generator apparently failed because it was designed to operate only in conjunction with the National Grid. It was apparently unable to provide power independently of the national grid.
The Telegraph quotes airport officials as saying that a backup power system using fossil-fuel diesel generators would not have been able to maintain the power supply. This claim raises questions about Britain's resilience to attacks in a net-zero future.
Let's take that in: The devastating fire with the complete outage reveals that one of the world's most important airports operates without backup energy systems – yet proudly emphasizes how carbon-free it is.
Meanwhile, the British government emphasizes that the cause of the fire was probably not sabotage. It believes it was an accident – anything else would be too embarrassing. Specialized investigators are continuing to examine the scene, they say. "Due to the location of the substation and the impact this incident had on critical national infrastructure, the London Police Counter Terrorism Command is leading our investigation into this matter," the police said.
It should be added: sabotage – not by a foreign power, but rather from within, by "green" parties who, under the guise of environmental friendliness, are destroying a fail-safe energy supply. But we know that from Germany too.