By Jo Nova
Turns out, one of the world’s largest airports apparently didn’t have reliable back up generators. This may be just sheer incompetence but some insiders are saying it’s specifically because it went Net Zero compliant in 2012 and switched diesel generators for biomass ones.
Apparently some terrorism investigators are looking closely at the cause of the fire, but the crazy thing is, that Heathrow was completely reliant on one substation nearby which went up in a fireball yesterday, and never had even the slightest hope of keeping the airport running. The blackout left something like 290,000 people stranded, with 1,300 flights canceled or rearranged. A bit like a war broke out or a volcano exploded.
Fury as Heathrow’s lack of back-up power causes ‘a contained version of 9/11’: Small fire at power station leaves more than 200,000 travellers, and others forced to turn around in mid-air
By Martin Robinson, Daily Mail
One industry source has claimed that Net Zero is to blame because Heathrow is moving from diesel back-up generators to biomass.
Reform MP Richard Tice said: ‘It appears that Heathrow had changed its backup systems in order to be, wait for it…Net Zero compliant’.
‘They had got rid of their diesel generators and had moved towards a biomass generator that was designed not to completely replace the grid but work alongside it. Their net zero compliant backup system has completely failed in its core function at the first time of asking’.
“Basically their net zero-compliant back-up system had completely failed in its core function at the first time of asking. It beggars belief.”
Speaking to The Telegraph, Mr Tice said: “Why is Heathrow being so silent about this? Are they embarrassed because they have something to hide?
But they did win a Sustainability Leaders Award in 2013 for burning down 13,000 tons of forest.
They were proud of their effort to change the global weather by (0.0 degrees)
According to the DailyMail the North Hyde substation fire involved a very old transformer catching alight and “involved 25000 litres of cooling oil igniting”. Apparently it burnt the generator at North Hyde and also the backup. Previously it had been running at 106% of capacity.
In their defence Heathrow effectively said they weren’t even trying to back up the whole airport, just some runway lights. Nothing to see here… it is just critical national infrastructure that could fail at any moment or be taken out in a blink at times of warfare:
[The Telegraph] — .. Heathrow said in a statement the airport’s back-up energy systems worked ‘as expected’ when the substation fire started.
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.
James Melville posted: ” …as an emergency back up this biomass relic is a farce. …
“Diesel kicks in within seconds, keeping runways lit and skies safe. Biomass dawdles — hours to reach full power, better for steady warmth than sudden blackouts. … Net Zero’s noble pursuit has left Heathrow vulnerable, a global hub undone not by storms or foes, but by the folly of prizing untested green tech over proven resilience.”
No matter how we look at this, in every direction, we see incompetence.
h/t David Maddison, Anton, Tonyb.
Using Stone Age technology (burning wood) at an airport.
What could possibly go wrong?
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Yeah but… they saved the planet right? Whaddaya mean, it didn’t need saving?
Talk about a total man-made crisis: surely someone ran a model… no?
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‘. Terrorist investigation?
Callidde should have been the subject of a police nvestigation or even a royal commission right from day one.
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Yeah, stone age men who yearned for the good old days of wood and stone to work with.
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You reap what ya sow.
In spades.
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Since Australia follows the stupid woke ideas of others, I wonder if any Australian airports use unreliable and slow to start and therefore dangerous wood burning backup power for such critical infrastructure?
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Rub 2 sticks together brother,
it’s worked for ever, why change.
Pass me the goanna tail… cheers!
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Let’s hope that Canbbbrrrrrr Airport along with Fairburn gets nobbled and all those ‘Pollies’ and Public Circus people have to get the train or bus to Sydney and back.
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Perth Airport, and I presume all Australian airports, used to have a no-break backup system with a diesel clutched to a continuously spinning flywheel coupled to an alternator. A very effective system – all you would see was a short power flicker as the system cut in. Was located in the car park adjacent to the terminal building.
Other critical airport services such as nav aids often had their own standby power systems. The main airport control systems were all powered by -48volts DC, battery-backed, so no problems there..
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Not sure if I have it right but the biomass boiler seems to be for heating the airport, nothing to do with electricity.
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It appears to provide both heat and electricity into the local grid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T2_Energy_Centre?wprov=sfla1
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Surely the airport wasn’t depending on a grid-connected power source as backup? It should have had its own independent backup power source.
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So it seems David, 1.8 mw likely wouldn’t cut it when the grid drops out.
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A figure being bandied around is that Heathrow requires 400 MW. Seems a lot.
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The anti-energy lobby likes to use the term biomass as though it was some new and properly engineered high-tech fuel system.
But the reality is that it’s the most primitive of all fuels: wood and other garbage.
Burning wood and other garbage for industrial and many domestic purposes was generally abandoned centuries ago and rapidly as soon as convenient high density fuels like coal, gas and oil became available with the technology to properly utilise them at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Burning garbage does have its place and is useful in some cases such as burning domestic rubbish collections to make electricity in non-mission-critical situations and avoid landfill use but woke Australia mostly bans that process. (Even woke European countries burn domestic waste.)
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Back in the day, having instant start and reliable backup power for critical infrastructure like airports and hospitals was standard procedure. Diesel generators (with instant start batteries for the first few seconds) did the job perfectly.
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It will be blamed on Russian terrorists.
The Security mob are searching for “evidence” of that right now.
I mean it must be that, not stupidity nor gullibility.
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Or they will blame TRUMP.
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Or it’s the spirit of Prince Philip come back to haunt the living – he always wanted the majority of us to just simply disappear 🦠
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Didn’t take long …
Putin is amazing. According to the media, he’s lost millions of soldiers, economy in ruins, yet he can still take out any infrastructure he wants whenever he wants. He even blows up his own pipelines rather than just turning the tap off …. Because he can.
Is he Chuck Norris’ evil twin?
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Thie above post was meant to have this link:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/33963424/fears-putin-behind-heathrow-blaze-russia/
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Well the Russians are being blamed for food shortages on our supermarket shelves in North QLD. Other sources say that ongoing supply disruptions are due to cyclone “Alfred” and a warehouse freezer malfunction.
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Will they require planes to burn biomass too?
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Passengers will be supplied with their own peddles (y’know like a big flying bike) hopefully paddles too coz methinks they’ll need ‘em.
Airstrip One is down, and Eurasia/Eastasia have always been at war: Double Plus D’oh!
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Aircraft have at least two power sources – maybe three. They have quite a complex power grid structure with built-in redundancy. A few mistakes were made – the 747 located all its inverters in one place, under the first class toilets, where a faulty drain tray once took out most of them, leaving the cockpit with limited flight instruments. Also the initial lithium battery location in the 787, which wasn’t vented to the outside, nor apparently not properly heat-shielded.
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On commercial and military aircraft they also have a Ram Air Turbine (RAT) which drops into the airstream in an emergency as a last resort which can produce between 5kW and 70KW of power.
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Am I correct in saying that in flight, they shut off the tail APU and only obtain power from from the engines?
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I’m rather more inclined to see this as part of the Green/duck squeezer lobby to destroy modern society and commerce.
They all want to wear linen and sandals and take cold showers, so the rest of us should be forced to do the same.
Never satisfied with wearing a hair shirt by themselves, and frowning on anyone who uses air transport for anything except jetting into Davos, they get their jollies watching technology and industry crumble.
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FWIW
“Sardines? Who knew… 60 Days Fixes Omega-3
Posted on 21 March 2025 by E.M.Smith
From “Higher Heart Risk” to “Low Heart Risk” – a Sardine Can A Day”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2025/03/21/sardines-who-knew-60-days-fixes-omega-3/
And the comments, where seed oils get a mention – including
“So we are left with a situation where:
1) we have evidence for the role of seed oils as a cause of heart disease,
2) where there is essentially no other theory presented for causation, and yet
3) the health authorities continue to recommend a hypothesis they themselves debunked decades ago.
Nothing to see here, move along please.”
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Icarus also flew too close to the sun. Solar it’s ben good to know you!
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Electricity has gone Stone Age, burning wood. To control atmospheric CO2, something no one can control. CO2 obviously a constant at 0.042% within a year and across the globe from pole to pole on a huge planet. We all know that. And moving very, very slowly regardless of what we do.
Only a madman would conclude that humans control the amount of CO2 in the air. Or the weather. And regional climates. I would call it climate megalomania, a characteristic of the United Nations since it was invented to stop wars like Ukraine, Syria, Korea, Vietnam,…
But UN 80,000 people want to be paid, so pay up and stop Climate Change. And keep burning wood to heat your airports and provide light.
What’s really needed is aircraft which can run on wood or batteries. A steam engine? Black coal with a fireman shoveling really fast on takeoff.
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You can bet there is a transformer condition monitoring report for the failed transformer showing high furan levels in the insulating oil and recommending transformer replacement. The poor condition has likely been identified a few years ago but the difficulty and cost of replacing a large, critical transformer means it gets pushed down the priority list rather than going straight to the top.
The oldest power transformer still operating in the UK was installed in 1933. A paper insulated oil filled transformer will normally have a working life of 40+years if it is well designed and not overloaded. Furan contamination of the oil is a sure sign of insulation break down. In hard working transformers that are well designed, that usually becomes evident after 40 years. I have seen it occur in as little as two years with poorly designed transformers that have hot spots.
The press will bang on about terrorism and the government will latch on to climate change but my bet is that it is just poor maintenance for the fault and poor risk management for the disruption of supply.
The UK has lost the plot worse than Australia. Chasing fairy dust and pixie farts rather than following sound engineering and maintenance practices. Reliability is way down the list of priorities. DEI and “sustainability” are their priority. The UK is sustaining a path to economic oblivion.
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There is now news coming out that Sadiq Khan was advised of the aged and poor condition of electrical equipment in the Heathrow area dating back to 2022.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14523119/firefighters-major-update-heathrow-airport-met-police-cause.html
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When I was doing my PhD I had a colleague who was studying just that. High furan levels were indicative of paper insulation breakdown resulting in a high tan delta (dissipation factor) leading to overheating of transformers and their destruction as happened in several notable cases in Sydney which lead to a power company sponsoring his research.
Proper maintenance involves checking furan levels and tan delta on a routine basis.
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The answer is, obviously, Gliders! That way we could save on everything including passengers. Airships might be another option. Both were tried in WW2. Relying on wind and solar (for the manufacture of hydrogen) were abandoned due to the inability to maintain reliable schedules and insufficient balsa wood. Billions of dollars would be saved by the reduction of itinerant and specious travel. Of course places like Bali, Singapore and Costa Del Sol would revert to mud flats and mosquitoes. WEF junkets to Switzerland would be reduced to Skype chats. Capt James Cook achieved miraculous discoveries on wind but it too long for the return journey
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Limes! Cabbages! Tulips!
No one ever lost betting on biomass…
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Blackout Bowen seen boarding private jet … to get over there on a study tour. He will figure out how to bring Australian power systems into line with the UK.
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So you cut down trees which love to consume CO2 from the atmosphere, and then burn the wood to release CO2 to save the world? What idiotic nonsense.
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Yes. They are morons.
Apparently it is ok to release CO2 from recently killed trees.
But it is not ok to release CO2 by burning higher density energy sources formed from trees which died millions of years ago.
Caveat: it is perfectly ok to release CO2 from fossil fuels if those fuels are used to transport recently killed trees to be burned in another country.
The world has gone stark raving mad.
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mmm even better, cut them down , pelletize them, ship them across an ocean, deliver them to site and then burn them. Its for the planet.
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So terrorists get past security and put a match to a pile of kindling. Anyway how to such fires in biomass facilities originate.
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How can you run an ever more electricity reliant civilisation with either intermittent or low energy density power? Wont work. Someone wise said ” ….a perfectly good civilisation is going to to waste”.
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I think Brookings and McKinsey have crafted it as ‘institutionalised weatlh transfer’ . . . All viruses mutate to ensure the healthy productive host is leached of all it’s prosperity . . In their view, you are a host . . .
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MailOnline can also reveal that a report for London Mayor Sadiq Khan in 2022 identified major problems with the electricity supply system in the Heathrow area due to a lack of capacity. It warned that the North Hyde substation, which exploded into flames last night, has been running at 106.2 per cent.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14522035/heathrow-airport-live-updates-gatwick-stansted-luton-fire-flights.html
The destroyed sub-station was operating well beyond its capacity when new, never mind its elderly status. Such a situation would demand a reliable backup supply.
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Before we laugh at them too much, how many of our own airports are this vulnerable.
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Do the regional Australian airports even have a backup power source?
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Melbourne has solar backup:
https://www.melbourneairport.com.au/corporate/melbourne-airport-greenpower-network
Sun goes behind cloud – all flights cancelled…
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So, it’s not a backup as such, more like a woke, feel good add on.
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NetZero is a mind virus that causes wooly thinking. Heathrow’s crucial energy back-up system powered by dawdling start-up, steam engine technology fired by days of yore biomass fuel rather than instant start, full demand capability diesel generators is an example. The UK’s major airport hub compromised is the costly consequence.
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So the Poms have managed to do what the entire Luftwaffe couldn’t in June 1940.
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With CI1 national infrastructure classification and bio fuel safe guards leaves a lot scratching their heads to the mandate in 2005 to scrap all UK, ONR 99 year redundancy safe guards for the nuclear infrastructure . . .Let me think might have some thing to do with the ‘sell off’ . . . 😉 Good luck . . .
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This would never happen in Australia, surely.
https://www.casa.gov.au/rules/regulatory-framework/casr/part-139-casr-aerodromes#Rulestatus
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What have these airport executives been doing during their periodic risk assessments? Surely, one of the key questions would be: what can shut us down and how do we assess the risk of such an event occurring. And how do we mitigate this risk?
It is not acceptable that a key transport hub is dependent on one substation and that no one knew about this. And if they did, and did nothing, that’s far worse.
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Should have been part of their KPI’s but obviously wasn’t, he might be looking for a new job soon.
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In breaking news, Heathrow announced it has purchased a fleet of EV’s that can produce days worth of fire by spraying water on them, replacing the woodfired generator.
The CEO was given a £1M pay rise for his ingenuity.
Mass population exodus of the UK sinking ship/nuclear target will resume shortly.
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Reading the last part of the article is STUNNING as it was made clear they were in serious need of new additional power sources as the substation was running near or over the rated capacity for the area and being old and out of date equipment is indicative of very bad management.
They should have added another 3-phase power line with another substation
The Airport was essentially sucking the old substation dry.
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HEATHROW’S NET ZERO PLAN
February 2022
LINK
48 page PDF
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