It's kinda shocking that single substation can take down the whole airport. I would think infrastructure that major would have at least a secondary substation either servicing the airport normally...
It's kinda shocking that single substation can take down the whole airport. I would think infrastructure that major would have at least a secondary substation either servicing the airport normally or at least ready as a warm spare of sorts. But I also know nothing about electrical grids, so perhaps my opinion is moot.
Here in the US, my parents are flying out to Greece for vacation on Monday. They're not flying through LHR, but I do wonder if there will be any knock-on effects that could affect their travel plans. I hope not.
I haven't seen any details, so this is just speculation, but things I have seen: Spares offline due to damage and not repaired due to cost or parts availability Spares offline for scheduled...
I haven't seen any details, so this is just speculation, but things I have seen:
Spares offline due to damage and not repaired due to cost or parts availability
Spares offline for scheduled maintenance
Spares failed when the load switched onto them (latent fault in the spares)
Spares failed due to overload when switched in - cascading failure
This kind of thing is hard to get right because a lot of the equipment sits dormant for long periods of time. Full testing is risky in and of itself, so the equipment might only be tested piecemeal, which means the backup plan is at least partly theoretical.
I am fond of the saying: in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are different.
On a non technical note, I think that people here in the UK are quite immiserated and don’t expect a lot when it comes to infrastructure, so there probably isn’t much public pressure to make...
On a non technical note, I think that people here in the UK are quite immiserated and don’t expect a lot when it comes to infrastructure, so there probably isn’t much public pressure to make things more robust, or really enough of an outcry when things go wrong. Our buses are always late or don’t show up, trains often delayed or cancelled, everything shuts down when it’s too cold, too hot, there’s a dusting of snow, flooding is increasingly normalised. Infrastructure projects always overrun, over-expense, and under-deliver (if they are finished at all). Health system crumbling to the point of material outcomes, cancer diagnoses and treatments delayed. In this context it’s not surprising in the least to me that a completely preventable or avoidable infrastructure problem caused this much of a problem
You're probably right. The UK has some serious infrastructure problems, and that's putting it mildly. I hadn't realized just how bad things were until I watched this video from BritMonkey covering...
You're probably right. The UK has some serious infrastructure problems, and that's putting it mildly.
I hadn't realized just how bad things were until I watched this video from BritMonkey covering a bunch of national statistics and relevant history. I was stunned to learn England's public transit is, on average, worse than the US (especially outside of London).
Looks like they've started resuming some flights now. I'm sure there will be a deep investigation after all this chaos from a substation outage.
It's kinda shocking that single substation can take down the whole airport. I would think infrastructure that major would have at least a secondary substation either servicing the airport normally or at least ready as a warm spare of sorts. But I also know nothing about electrical grids, so perhaps my opinion is moot.
Here in the US, my parents are flying out to Greece for vacation on Monday. They're not flying through LHR, but I do wonder if there will be any knock-on effects that could affect their travel plans. I hope not.
I haven't seen any details, so this is just speculation, but things I have seen:
This kind of thing is hard to get right because a lot of the equipment sits dormant for long periods of time. Full testing is risky in and of itself, so the equipment might only be tested piecemeal, which means the backup plan is at least partly theoretical.
I am fond of the saying: in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are different.
On a non technical note, I think that people here in the UK are quite immiserated and don’t expect a lot when it comes to infrastructure, so there probably isn’t much public pressure to make things more robust, or really enough of an outcry when things go wrong. Our buses are always late or don’t show up, trains often delayed or cancelled, everything shuts down when it’s too cold, too hot, there’s a dusting of snow, flooding is increasingly normalised. Infrastructure projects always overrun, over-expense, and under-deliver (if they are finished at all). Health system crumbling to the point of material outcomes, cancer diagnoses and treatments delayed. In this context it’s not surprising in the least to me that a completely preventable or avoidable infrastructure problem caused this much of a problem
You're probably right. The UK has some serious infrastructure problems, and that's putting it mildly.
I hadn't realized just how bad things were until I watched this video from BritMonkey covering a bunch of national statistics and relevant history. I was stunned to learn England's public transit is, on average, worse than the US (especially outside of London).