Category Archives: Utilities

Fire shuts one of UK’s most important power cables in midst of supply crunch

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Coal plants being warmed up as market prices surge to £2,500 per MWh from a norm of £40

A major fire has forced the shutdown of one of Britain’s most important power cables importing electricity from France as the UK faces a supply crunch and record high market prices.

National Grid was forced to evacuate staff from the site of the IFA high-voltage power cable, which brings electricity from France to a converter station in Kent, where 12 fire engines attended the blaze in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

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Jersey hits back at ‘disproportionate’ French threat to cut electricity

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Paris threatens to take retaliatory measures in row over post-Brexit licences for French fishing boats

Jersey has accused France of making “disproportionate” threats after Paris warned it could cut off electricity to the island in a row over post-Brexit fishing rights.

The maritime minister, Annick Girardin, warned on Tuesday France was ready to take “retaliatory measures” after accusing the Channel Island of dragging its feet over issuing new licences to French boats.

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‘Monster’ fatberg blocks Birmingham sewer

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Mass weighing 300 tonnes not expected to be cleared until June, says water company

Engineers are working around the clock to clear a “monster” fatberg 1km long which is clogging a sewer in Birmingham.

The blockage is not expected to be removed until June, water services company Severn Trent said in a statement, adding that the fatberg was about four miles east of the city centre in Hodge Hill.

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Thames Water hopes to harness human ‘poo power’ to heat homes

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Company says sewage plan would avoid 105,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over 30 years

Thousands of homes in south-west London could soon be warmed by the waste from their local sewage works as part of England’s first poo-powered district heating scheme.

Thames Water hopes to harness the heat of human waste from its treatment plant in Kingston upon Thames to warm more than 2,000 new homes that form part of a regeneration plan for the borough’s Cambridge Road estate.

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Raw sewage dumped into English and Welsh beaches ‘2,900 times this year’

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Exclusive: public health and environment at risk as water companies overuse emergency overflows, says pressure group

Water companies discharged raw sewage into bathing water beaches almost 3,000 times in the past year, polluting the environment and risking public health, new analysis shows.

Related: Face masks and gloves found on 30% of UK beaches in clean-up

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Revealed: raw sewage poured into Olympic Park wildlife haven

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Thames Water overflow pipe pumped waste for 1,000 hours into London wetlands last year

Raw sewage was discharged for more than 1,000 hours from a Thames Water overflow pipe into an environmental wetland at the Olympic Park last year, the Guardian can reveal.

The combined sewer overflow (CSO) at Mulberry Court pumped untreated waste 91 times into the waterway that feeds into the River Lea. To April this year, the same CSO has so far discharged for 34 hours in 20 incidents.

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UK energy watchdog demands answers after major power cut

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Outage caused travel chaos and cut electricity to almost 1m people in England and Wales

The energy watchdog, Ofgem, is demanding answers from the National Grid after a power cut left people stuck in trains for up to nine hours and cut electricity to almost 1 million people in England and Wales.

The biggest power outage in a decade caused widespread disruption on the rail network during the evening rush hour on Friday. Traffic light systems stopped working, causing gridlock in some areas, and Newcastle airport was left in darkness. Power had been restored to 900,000 customers by Saturday, but the rail network was struggling to get services back to normal.

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Lights out: the price hikes leaving millions of South Africans in the dark | Kimon de Greef

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Electricity costs have tripled in the past decade under a utility company plagued by debt and corruption claims, wiping out decades of progress

Electricity, when it arrived in Nosisi Rasmeni’s life, seemed to promise a better future.

Like most black South Africans who grew up during apartheid, she was raised with gas stoves, candles and paraffin heaters. Her family’s shack was poorly lit and smelled of fumes. “Electricity was only for whites,” says Rasmeni, 37.

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