Soldato
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Lucky him, a few free days away hope it was somewhere nice.
Heathrow total shutdown
- Thread starter Felon
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Man of Honour
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- Falling...
I'm surprised they don't have a direct feed from the grid like other major infrastructure does.
Also surprised there isn't a redundant connection for Heathrow, but apparently there is a backup generator that was taken out by the substation fire? Idk if this backup generator would have been big enough to power the whole place though, would have to be a pretty big backup...
www.bbc.co.uk
Guess it sounds like a transformer failure, and they do happen in their own sometimes but it is suspicious... wouldn't be surprised if this was sabotage from environmental extremists or something.
Heathrow Airport closed all day after nearby fire causes power outage - live updates
Flights are cancelled and diverted mid-air as Europe's busiest airport closes until midnight over a "significant power outage".
www.bbc.co.uk
Guess it sounds like a transformer failure, and they do happen in their own sometimes but it is suspicious... wouldn't be surprised if this was sabotage from environmental extremists or something.
He’s in India. I guess it depends on if he likes the food.
Associate
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You'd think a campus as critical as a major airport would have two on-premise substations, at opposite ends of the site, each being fed an MV feed from a completely separate section of the grid... Surprised that's not the case. I appreciate that north hyde is a pretty big sub, but if you look at its area, Heathrow is right on the southern border, there should easily be a feed from a sub to the south of the airport as well.
Soldato
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Would there have been any security at this substation considering its importance, not that there was any potentially suspicious act.
Soldato
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I've never seen any manpower security at a substation but it will probably have physical security protections like hardened doors, cameras, high fences.
Most people wouldn't invade a substation as you're at risk of electrocuting yourself from all the exposed HV equipment.
I think it’s just cameras and rapid response security. I don’t think you can place 24/7 onsite security at anything but the most critical substation
Soldato
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Soldato
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This is a big yikes.
The entire airport....gosh. That's a logistical nightmare for everybody.
The entire airport....gosh. That's a logistical nightmare for everybody.
Soldato
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Surely he can just land at another UK airport? Unless you mean he was going to fly out of the UK.
You know airport capacity is limited right? And they all have their own schedules as well. Also not all airports can accomodate all aircraft. Carriers wont be usually be allowing take off with the intent of landing at another airport and if they are mid air they will often return to the departure airport rather than carry on knowing they cant land at the destination, we've already seen that.
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Man of Honour
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Exactly.
I mean I've been to a few critical infrastructure sites in my time, and many have direct independent feeds from the grid, so even if a substation on the network goes down they're still up and running. I guess it comes down to cost saving, or "it's never happened before so it won't be a problem."
Soldato
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Really like what?
The grid is ridiculously reliable and we're almost certainly talking about a catastrophic transformer failure taking out adjacent breakers which is quite hard to defend against when they're off the same super grid connection.
Interesting that from pics it looks like two transformers were quite close to each other, and didn't have the large concrete blast walls you see at some substations, maybe if only one had been damaged the power loss mightn't have been as severe (although imagine the power would still have been shut off entirely while the firefighting was actually happening).
news.sky.com
Also funny thinking about it how low security the site is for how important it is. Eg compare the fencing there to the 15ft high metal wall & fence that a small power plant I occasionally see has:
Heathrow Airport closed after 'significant power outage' due to nearby fire
No flights will run to or from Heathrow Airport on Friday after the airport was shut due to a fire at a nearby power station. Passengers have been warned to stay away, with disruption likely to last for days.
Also funny thinking about it how low security the site is for how important it is. Eg compare the fencing there to the 15ft high metal wall & fence that a small power plant I occasionally see has:
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Soldato
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I heard Heathrow are scrapping the 3rd runway and instead putting in a revised planning application for a substation on the planned site.
Also lessons will be learned.
(and then not learned as soon as media attention moves on to the next shiny story)