Mystery of Britain’s unexplained power outages hours before Spain and Portugal blackout
29 April 2025, 14:09
Britain’s electricity grid operator is investigating unexplained power plant failures that hit the UK’s system hours before Spain and Portugal were affected by mass blackouts.
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The National Energy System Operator (Neso) observed unusual activity on two occasions on Sunday that saw the power frequency shift unexpectedly. They happened in the early morning and evening.
The first event began at around 2am with a power failure at the Keadby 2 gas-fired power plant in Lincolnshire, followed by an unexplained failure of the Viking Link interconnection between the UK and Denmark, the Telegraph reports.
Neso, the quango that manages the British grid, confirmed an investigation is under way.
Massive power system failures occurred on Monday throughout Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France.
Much of the two countries was brought to a standstill on Monday after a power cut switched off traffic lights and left people unable to access cash machines.
Spanish power distributors said on Tuesday morning that more than 99% of power has been recovered.
The blackout saw train passengers stranded and millions of people left without phone and internet access after the outage on Monday.
The Portuguese National Cybersecurity Centre said in a statement there was no indication that it was caused by a cyber attack.
The UK has been looking at how to deal with “different kinds of challenges and threats”, the Home Secretary said this morning.
Asked whether the power cut there had triggered a fear that British infrastructure could be affected in the same way, Yvette Cooper said the UK has a “continued approach” to “resilience” and “security issues”.
She added: “We’ve been looking, as part of wider security reviews across the country, how we deal with both resilience and also different kinds of challenges and threats.
“Some of which can be the traditional security challenges, some of which can be the kinds of resilience – things that we’re talking about in Spain and Portugal – and we obviously support them and the governments there in the work that they’re doing.”
It comes just weeks after Heathrow Airport was forced to halt operations for most of a day after a power outage caused by a substation fire.
The airport was closed to all flights until around 6pm on March 21, which disrupted more than 270,000 air passenger journeys.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said at the time that the Government will “have to look hard” at the “resilience” for major institutions such as Heathrow.
