Readers will recall that a power cut put a large swathe of northern Scotland in the dark a few weeks back, apparently due to a faulty relay in a substation. However, a number of expert commentators have observed that this seems to be a somewhat implausible explanation and there have been several attempts to check the facts, including an FOI request submitted by yours truly.
One of the other attempts took the form of a question put in the Scottish Parliament by Alex Johnstone, the MSP for North East Scotland. Here, such as it is, is the answer he received, as documented in the official report of the Scottish Parliament:
Electricity Grid Failure (Wind Turbines)
3. Alex Johnstone (North East Scotland) (Con): To ask the Scottish Government whether it has undertaken any further investigation into whether an overreliance on wind turbines as a source of electricity played a role in the grid failure on 16 April 2014. (S4O-03258)The Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth (John Swinney): On 22 April, I set out the reasons for the power outage of 16 April and submitted to the Scottish Parliament information centre a comprehensive note outlining the contributing factors.
Alex Johnstone: On 22 April, the cabinet secretary told me that Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution had identified a faulty electronic relay as the cause of the problem. However, engineering opinion that in many cases has been volunteered to me has suggested that, far from failing, the relay did exactly what it was supposed to do and that the cause of the trip has yet to be identified. Will the cabinet secretary undertake to make SSE’s engineering incident report available to allow independent opinion to be sought?
John Swinney: On 22 April, I relayed to the Parliament the information supplied to me by SSE that a fault in the electronic relay at the Knocknagael substation near Inverness was the root cause of the outage. In addition, SSE has advised me that it is engaging closely with technical experts at Siemens, which is the manufacturer of the relay, to ensure that that fault will not occur on SSE’s network in the future.
SSE’s position that the reason for the power outage was the reason that I gave to Parliament back in April could not be clearer. I hope that that gives Mr Johnstone the reassurance that he is looking for that the examination by those who are responsible for operating the grid identified that as the particular problem that led to the circumstances in April this year.
The failure to confirm that the engineering incident report will be made available looks intriguing, to say the least.