Police have begun an investigation after protesters broke into one of Britain’s biggest power stations last week [28th November 2008] and cut almost 2 per cent of the country’s electricity supplies.
Up to 500 megawatts of generating capacity was lost from the national network for about four hours after the incident at Kingsnorth coal and oil-fired power station in Kent, The Times has learnt. An intruder scaled an electric fence, entered a secure area and switched off one of four turbines supplying London and the South East.
E.ON, the German power group that operates the plant, is understood to suspect that some of its own staff or contracted employees were involved in the incident last Friday night.
According to figures from National Grid, total UK electricity demand at the time was about 33,000 megawatts – meaning that 500 megawatts represented more than 1.5 per cent of the total, enough to power a city the size of Bristol.
The protesters, who have not been caught despite much of the episode being caught on CCTV, climbed an electric security fence that was not working at the time. Having switched off Unit Two, they left through an entrance that only employees would have been familiar with. They also managed to go through a complex procedure at a control panel inside one of the turbine halls to turn the machinery off.
Kent police are involved in the investigation. E.ON has ordered an internal investigation, and is examining its own security procedures.
E.ON has become a key target for climate change protesters because Kingsnorth has been earmarked for construction of Britain’s first new coal-fired power station in decades. The plant, which has a total generating capacity of 1,960 megawatts, making it one of Britain’s biggest power stations, is to be retired from service soon and E.ON wants to build a £2 billion coal replacement, which environmentalists say would lock in the emission of many millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases for decades to come.
Protest messages were also left strewn across the turbine hall during the incident.
An E.ON spokesman confirmed that an incident had taken place in which the site was entered illegally and equipment was tampered with. “While we are respectful of people’s right to peaceful and lawful protest, this was clearly neither of those and could have had very serious implications, not least because of the potential for serious injury or worse. Thankfully, our site team responded very quickly and professionally to ensure that the situation was brought under control.
“We have launched an investigation and are working closely with the police on their inquiries. Kingsnorth power station remains operational.”
E.ON has defended its plans for a coal-fired plant at Kingsnorth by saying that it would be fitted with equipment designed to strip out carbon dioxide for safe storage.
So-called carbon capture and storage (CCS) remains an experimental technology that has not yet been demonstrated on a commercial scale anywhere in the world.
– from The Times newspaper.
– or the below from BBC News; pick & mix the facts you prefer:
Intruder shuts down power turbine
A turbine at a power station in Kent where climate change campaigners have been holding a series of protests was shut down by an intruder.
Energy company E.On said it believed whoever shut down the turbine must have had specialist knowledge to carry out the “potentially deadly” sabotage.
The shut-down happened on the night of 28 November during two days of action by the Camp for Climate Action group.
However, no organisation or individual has claimed it turned off the turbine.
“We don’t know whether it was a protester or not,” said E.On spokesman Jonathan Smith.
“But they gained access to the site, tampered with a pretty specific board and managed to turn off unit two.
“It is completely unacceptable. If you ignore the fact they have broken into our site, what they were doing was potentially dangerous, potentially deadly even.”
Targeted offices
He said engineers located the problem quickly and turned the turbine back on.
Customers were not affected by the shutdown because the shortfall was made up by other suppliers to the National Grid.
During the two days of action, Camp for Climate Action protesters targeted E.ON offices in London and across England.
It followed a week-long Climate Camp near Kingsnorth power station on the Hoo peninsular in August.
The current Kingsnorth power station is due to close in 2015 and E.ON wants to replace it with two new coal units, which it claims will be 20% cleaner.
Mr Smith said police were investigating the shutdown.
He said Kingsnorth was probably the most secure coal-fired power station in the UK.
“Security at Kingsnorth is extremely high,” he said.
“We are looking at security and working with police to make sure this can’t happen again.”
– from The Guardian newspaper:
“It was extremely odd indeed, quite creepy. We have never known anything like this at all, but it shows that if people want to do something badly enough they will find a way,” said Emily Highmore, a spokeswoman for E.On.
Yesterday the full story emerged of what happened. “It was about 10pm, very dark indeed,” said Highmore. “It looks from the CCTV like he came in via a very remote part of the site by the sea wall and got over the double layer of fences.”
The intruder then crossed a car park and walked to an unlocked door. But instead of going to the power station’s main control room, where about eight people would have been working, he headed for its main turbine hall, where no one would have been working at that time.
Within minutes, says E.On, “he had tampered with some equipment” — believed to be a computer at a control panel — “and tripped unit 2, one of the station’s giant 500MW turbines”.
“This caused the unit to go offline,” she added. “It was running at full 500MW load and the noise it would have made as it shut itself down is just incredible. CCTV shows that he then just walked out, and went back over the fence.
“It could be that no one has taken responsibility because they were so frightened by the noise it would have made. It’s probably taken them a week just to get over the shock.”
“He left a banner but it was a real DIY job. It was really scrappy. This was an old bedsheet with writing done out of gaffer tape. It was very crude,” said Highmore
“People at the station are gobsmacked,” she added. “This is a different league to protesters chaining themselves to equipment. It’s someone treating a power station as an adventure playground. You have to be trained to work here. People do not just wander about on their own. He could have killed himself. We do not have a problem with public protest but this was reckless. Whoever it was has crossed a line they should not have gone over. Power stations are dangerous places.”