Sky Views: Who was to blame for the power cut? It's a complex question

Sky Views: Who was to blame for the power cut? It's a complex question

Whose fault was the power cut that unplugged the east coast mainline like a Hornby set, switched off traffic lights, and turned hospitals and airports dark?

It's a straightforward enough question, one to which the thousands affected deserve a straightforward answer.

Declaration of interest: I was among those stranded at King's Cross. It only cost me a portion of a family weekend and a night in a hotel but I'd definitely like one, and unlike most of those who were stuck I got the chance to ask.

Five days after the event John Pettigrew, the chief executive of National Grid, was made available for interview. As a National Grid lifer who has turned a trainee's £12,000-a-year salary into a £4m plus pay package last year, he knows his brief and his responsibilities.


Mr Pettigrew accepted the failure of two power sources was the initial cause of the problem, but said it was extremely rare and the system worked as designed, ensuring minimum interruption of service.

Image: The thousands affected by the power cut deserve a straightforward answer

But while the disruption to trains, planes and automobiles was "regrettable and should not have happened", it was not his fault. Responsibility for that, he implied, lay elsewhere in the network.

You would not know it from the back of your utility bill, but that network involves a complex chain of largely private companies, each corporately independent with a responsibility to shareholders as well as customers, but collectively in control of perhaps the most critical piece of the UK's national infrastructure.

So while National Grid (actually an international company with major US interests) is responsible for power transmission, power generation is the responsibility of companies like EDF (a French-owned multinational).

Power distribution meanwhile rests with 14 regional distributors operating under six umbrella groups that own and maintain power cables and lines. These include UK Power Networks, owned by international power company CK Holdings, valued at £15bn on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

If your own lights are beginning to flicker at this stage you are excused. Electricity is a complex business but not, it seems, as complex as the business of electricity.

It was these distribution companies that, National Grid say, were responsible for deciding what and where power was cut on Friday night in order to rebalance the grid, and thus avoid even wider disruption.

Finally there are the energy suppliers from whom we buy our electricity, dominated by a 'big six' that includes British Gas and npower, with a host of challenger companies lined up behind them.

Overseeing all this and representing the public interest is the regulator, Ofgem. In this system the Secretary of State for business, currently Andrea Leadsom, is practically a bystander.

If your own lights are beginning to flicker at this stage you are excused. Electricity is a complex business but not, it seems, as complex as the business of electricity.

John Pettigrew is a fierce defender of this structure, which emerged from the break-up and privatisation of the Central Electricity Generating Board in the 1990s.

He says it has helped deliver efficiency, reliability, value to consumers, and will help enable the UK to meet its 2050 carbon-neutral target. "By any comparator our network is world class," he told me.

It did not feel like it on Friday night, and a Government investigation will eventually determine where fault for Friday's blackout ultimately lies. Mr Pettigrew warned that consumers will have to pay if there is a demand to make the system robust enough to withstand "twice in 30 year events".

Image: The outage caused travel chaos - especially at King's Cross

He may be right. He's the one with 30 years experience after all. But herein lies the problem for the industry, and the government.

Labour's answer to Friday's chaos was to press the case for renationalisation, an idea that polls well in theory regardless of how its critics, Mr Pettigrew included, warn it would impact in practice.

Power is a politically potent issue. People hate high bills and the notion that privatisation has not always delivered the benefits of competition. There is unease too, as hard to quantify as it is to dismiss, that a fundamental national asset is not as nationally owned as we might think.

State control offers a seductive, simple counter to these issues and, right or wrong, it will have won a few more advocates in the crowd on the concourse on Friday night.

And as long as the current system appears better at delivering profits than accountability, it will be that little bit harder to counter.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Sky News editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Rowland Manthorpe - What do you get if you mix technology and populism? Dominic Cummings