National Grid will report to energy regulator Ofgem and the UK government by the end of the week on the findings of an investigation into the blackout that left hundreds of thousands of people without electricity in England and Wales on Friday.
Group chief executive John Pettigrew stated in a LinkedIn post the grid company is “certain” the incident was a “freak coincidence and not a cyber-attack”, and was not linked to high levels of renewables on the system.
“Rest assured we have been doing everything in our power to understand the exact sequence of events and consequences of Friday evening,” he stated.
“The whole UK energy industry needs to understand the causes of this power cut and also why it was able to create such significant disruption to services across Great Britain, particularly the transport network.”
The blackout, which lasted for about an hour, occurred after a gas-fired power plant failed, closely followed by Orsted’s 1.2GW Hornsea 1 wind farm off Yorkshire. The Danish developer is carrying out its own investigation into the matter.
Pettigrew added National Grid will cooperate fully with the government’s own Energy Emergencies Executive Committee inquiry.
“I would encourage other players involved in Friday’s events – the local distribution companies, the generators, Network Rail, the train operators – to be equally forensic in their own investigations,” he said.
Despite the “rare and exception combination of circumstances” the system “did the job that it was designed to do – by protecting many more millions of customers nationwide from potential loss of power”.
He added: “Contrary to some erroneous media reports, I am not on holiday – indeed I’ve been at my desk almost all weekend. As CEO of National Grid PLC ultimately the buck stops with me.”
Ofgem said it has requested an “urgent interim report” into the incident by Friday 16 August. “A final, detailed technical report must be provided to Ofgem by Friday 6 September,” a spokeswoman said.