Another case of them wanting to be like us...
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An electricity blackout across much of London caused travel disruption last night and further undermined confidence in transmission networks.
Two weeks after a blackout paralysed much of North America, commuters were stranded in trains and stations during a failure of the ring main in south London at the height of the rush hour.
Experts said equipment failure in Wimbledon was the likely cause - probably as a transformer bringing down voltage from the National Grid knocked out supply.
Last night National Grid said: "At this stage we are investigating the cause and cannot speculate on what happened."
Tim Green of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London said: "This . . . will raise questions about the degree of redundancy in the network. Blackouts in the UK tend to happen in rural areas as a result of storms, but for this to happen there would have to be a major equipment failure and a problem with back-up systems too."
The blackout, of less than an hour, caused most problems on the London Underground, which recently closed its alternative power supply system in favour of using the National Grid.
The entire network was halted as power cuts to signalling equipment changed signals to red. Staff brought passengers out of trains stopped between stations.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentS...y&c=StoryFT&cid=1059479397973&p=1012571727085
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An electricity blackout across much of London caused travel disruption last night and further undermined confidence in transmission networks.
Two weeks after a blackout paralysed much of North America, commuters were stranded in trains and stations during a failure of the ring main in south London at the height of the rush hour.
Experts said equipment failure in Wimbledon was the likely cause - probably as a transformer bringing down voltage from the National Grid knocked out supply.
Last night National Grid said: "At this stage we are investigating the cause and cannot speculate on what happened."
Tim Green of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London said: "This . . . will raise questions about the degree of redundancy in the network. Blackouts in the UK tend to happen in rural areas as a result of storms, but for this to happen there would have to be a major equipment failure and a problem with back-up systems too."
The blackout, of less than an hour, caused most problems on the London Underground, which recently closed its alternative power supply system in favour of using the National Grid.
The entire network was halted as power cuts to signalling equipment changed signals to red. Staff brought passengers out of trains stopped between stations.
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentS...y&c=StoryFT&cid=1059479397973&p=1012571727085