**Britain’s electricity transmission network was capable of providing enough power to Heathrow Airport to keep it operating despite a fire at a substation that forced it to close for nearly 24 hours last week, National Grid’s CEO has said.**
A fire at the North Hyde substation, which feeds most of Heathrow Airport with most of its electricity, resulted in the closure of the airport and led to concerns about the resilience of key arteries in Britain’s transport network.
The closure caused aviation chaos due to the cancellation of more than 1,300 flights, affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers.
But according to National Grid chief executive John Pettigrew, two other substations also feed the airport, with each able to meet Heathrow’s electricity needs.
“There was no lack of capacity from the substations,” he told the _Financial Times_. “Each substation individually can provide enough power to Heathrow.” It was a “question for Heathrow” as to why they took the decision to close the entire airport in light of this, he added.
Following his comments, a spokesperson for Heathrow said: “In line with our airline partners, our objective was to reopen as soon as safely and practically possible after the fire ... over the weekend, we were able to focus on operating a full schedule of over 2,500 flights.”
The government has ordered the National Energy System Operator (NESO) to conduct a thorough investigation of the failure. As well as assessing the immediate reasons for why the fire started in the first place, NESO will also make a broader assessment about the UK’s energy resilience and actions that could be taken to prevent similar incidences from occurring in the future.
Energy minister Ed Miliband said: “The government is determined to do everything it can to prevent a repeat of what happened at Heathrow. This review will be an important step in helping us to do so.”
NESO is expected to report to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Ofgem with its initial findings within six weeks.
Meanwhile, Chancellor Rachel Reeves made an appearance on _Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips_ over the weekend where she was asked about how embarrassing the closure was to the government, and whether they regretted [putting off a final decision](https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/02/27/government-signals-approval-gatwick-expansion-delays-final-decision-until-october) on expanding Gatwick by a further six months.
“We’ve given an in-principle decision to expand Gatwick, as well as supporting expansion – [a third runway](https://eandt.theiet.org/2025/01/29/controversial-third-runway-heathrow-airport-gets-firm-backing-chancellor) – at Heathrow,” she said. “We do need to expand airport capacity in the UK and I think what we’ve seen in the last couple of days shows how important that is, but also how important it is to build the resilience in our UK critical infrastructure, including our hub airport Heathrow.”
On Sunday, a Heathrow spokesperson said the airport was “open and fully operational” again, with 1,300 flights expected to take off and land. Nevertheless, it warned travellers to check with their airline for full details of any incoming or outgoing flights from the airport.
Mark Coles, the IET’s head of technical regulations, said: “Maintenance work will look to diagnose possible failures of equipment and then any required repair work can be carried out.
“For this situation, the investigation will look at the history of the equipment, such as the manufacturer’s data from when it was manufactured. The investigation will be far reaching, and every aspect will be looked at to ascertain what has happened. It is very unusual for one incident to cause the entire shutdown of an entire site like Heathrow Airport.”