Why Has Such An Important Piece Of Infrastructure (Heathrow Airport) Not Got Standby Generators?

[Hymie]

No one seems to be asking this question.

 

Many hospitals have standby generators since the loss of mains power would likely lead to a number of deaths, especially anyone being operated on.

 

In the case of Heathrow, the cost of the recent power loss must run into many millions of pounds.  While power losses in many parts of the UK are quite rare; I’ve suffered power losses despite living in a fairly large town.

 

To my mind it is only a matter of time before this happens again.

 

While the cost of installing standby generators capable of powering Heathrow airport won’t be cheap, the set up could be designed to ensure only essential services are maintained (maybe with reduced lighting/heating etc).

 

The cost of such an arrangement would pay for itself after one power outage.

[Atheist]

They do have standby generators and I have read:-

1 They worked fine, and

2 They or it was damaged,

All very confusing.

[Hymie]

If they do have standby generators, whoever is responsible for ensuring they operate correctly will have some serious questions to answer.

[Atheist]

BTW. Standby generators would not be little things, bearing in mind that Heathrow uses as much juice as a town. I doubt if they're in a shed inside the Heathrow perimeter.

[bednobs]

Eh? EVERYONE has been asking that question!

[DDIL]

//Many hospitals have standby generators since the loss of mains power would likely lead to a number of deaths//

yet there were hospitals affected by yesterday's incident 

[Old_Geezer]

They needed fallback substations. Planning seems to have failed at a basic level.

[davebro3]

14 years of Tory misrule? haha

[barry1010]

The generators are on site

[tomus42]

I'm sure the backup generators worked fine. It is surely just a case of taking every precaution after there's been a fire at the airport.

[Atheist]

There wasn't a fire at the airport.

[Atheist]

Russia will be using hacking tools to blow up substations; they don't need masked men to cut the wires and attach ticking clocks before they escape over the rooftops of West London suburbs.

[fripfrip]

The original back up generators were diesel powered,so they got rid of them and installed eco friendly ones but for some reason these failed.

[Roobaba]

I could answer your question Hymie but I choose not to. I am not an expert by any means but did work in the industry for 18 years until it was privatised in the by Thatcher in 1990, I endured th fallout until the mid 1990's when I gave up and took voluntary redundancy (used the money to start my own electronics/computer manufacturing business which I still run now) - Several of my friends who were young trainee engineers at the time were scared of the safety cutbacks they voiced their concerns but were not listened to as you would expect. I'm not sure what happened at Heathrow, but it seems unbelievable to me that the power network for the airport was/is not configured such that alternative supply arrangements could be employed in the event of an outage caused by equipment failure. Backfeeding from another substation is generally possible, but sometimes not possible due to the power/load requirements, hence the backup generators running to supply essential equipment and services like lighting and of course air traffic systems - communications and navigation etc. I hope everything gets back to normal soon, as for it being the Russians.. I don't want to start another new conspiracy theory we have enough of them already, but I don't think we can rule it out categorically.

[Roobaba]

*in the by Thatcher in 1990
should read
*by Thatcher in 1990 (add in Margaret if you're nice about her)
 

[Roobaba]

*I endured th fallout
of course should be
*I endured the fallout
(apologies I was in a rush typing!)

[Hymie]

I’ve worked at various locations having diesel standby generators, some configured to start automatically (on loss of mains power), others requiring manual start – but all were subject to regular test to ensure they would operate when required.

 

In defence of Heathrow’s management having done everything they reasonably could have been expected to do to avoid this disaster – I would expect them to publish the maintenance records for the standby generators and the readiness tests (dates) that demonstrated their operability (including relevant load tests).

 

It might well be that someone thought that the standby generators would operate ‘as and when required’ without any maintenance or regular test.

[fripfrip]

^^^                   ^^^

Actually i thing this kind of electrical equipment requires regular planned maintainence and in my experience has to be logged and signed for.