Power has been restored to Heathrow Airport several hours after a fire at a London substation plunged the facility into darkness. The airport remains closed but lights have been seen on in the main building of the airport’s Terminal 4 and the lifts in the multi-storey car park also working again.
National Grid said an “interim solution” has been found to allow power to be restored to customers, including Heathrow Airport. A National Grid spokesperson said: “We’re sorry for the disruption caused by a fire at our North Hyde substation and for the loss of power supplies in the area. Teams have been working around the clock to restore power as soon as possible.
“Working in partnership with the local network operator SSEN Distribution (SSEN), the network has been reconfigured to restore all customers impacted, including the ability to resupply the parts of Heathrow airport that are connected to North Hyde.
“This is an interim solution while we carry out further work at North Hyde to return the substation and our network to normal operation. We are continuing to work closely with all stakeholders to manage this incident, and are focused on returning to normal resilience levels as soon as possible.”
The airport earlier warned that it did not know when power would return and spoke of “significant disruption” over the coming days.
Heathrow said in a statement at lunchtime that its back-up energy systems worked “as expected” when the substation fire started on Thursday night.
It said: “We have multiple sources of energy into Heathrow.
“But when a source is interrupted, we have back-up diesel generators and uninterruptable power supplies in place, and they all operated as expected.
“Our back-up systems are safety systems which allow us to land aircraft and evacuate passengers safely, but they are not designed to allow us to run a full operation.
“As the busiest airport in Europe, Heathrow uses as much energy as a small city, therefore it’s not possible to have back-up for all of the energy we need to run our operation safely.
“We are implementing a process which will allow us to redirect power to the affected areas, but this is a safety critical process which takes time, and maintaining safety remains our priority, so we have taken the decision to close the airport for today.”
Counter-terrorism police officers are leading the investigation into the cause of the fire which led to the closure of the airport.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said there is “currently no indication of foul play” but “we retain an open mind at this time”.
The force said its Counter Terrorism Command would lead inquiries given the impact of the fire “on critical national infrastructure”.
More than 200,000 air passengers have had their flights to or from Heathrow cancelled or diverted on Friday because the airport is closed all day after a fire at a nearby electrical substation.
Thousands of homes were also left without power.
Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan said the closure of Heathrow Airport was “hugely frustrating” but praised emergency services for their response to the fire.
He said there is currently “no reason at all to suspect foul play” over the fire.
He said 150 families had to evacuate their homes and that around 70,000 homes and businesses lost their power as a result, but that most of them have now had their power restored.
