‘Dishonest’ bosses in charge of the creaking national energy grid are putting lives in danger because they refuse to admit the system is on the brink of collapse, according to control room engineers.
Whistleblowers have told The Mail on Sunday that safety breaches are routine, and a catastrophic blackout is an ‘engineering certainty’.
Accusing bosses of a cover-up, concerned insiders say they spent two years warning executives at the National Energy System Operator (Neso) and regulator, Ofgem, that the rush to Net Zero means they have ‘lost control of the system’. Yet no action was taken.
Last week, Ofgem ordered an investigation after leaked documents revealed the network came close to shutting down on June 23 thanks to a shortage of wind and solar energy.
But sources have told the MoS that the true scale of the problem is far worse and the electricity grid has been out of control since Labour came to power and accelerated the push for ‘clean’ energy. They say thousands of new wind farms, solar farms and battery storage units are destabilising the network.
Now a group of Neso engineers have appealed to the public and Ofgem to help expose the truth.
‘We the engineers have asked Ofgem to investigate and ensure the system is safe for two years now. That is simply done by asking for proof that Neso can always work out how much energy is required. And they won’t do that and they won’t investigate. So we have told the world.
‘June 23 was simply another day. We don’t have control of the system. We have tried our best.
Whistleblowers have told The Mail on Sunday that safety breaches are routine, and a catastrophic blackout is an ‘engineering certainty’
‘It’s now over to the public and the regulator. Please help.’
Energy consultant Kathryn Porter told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The system is becoming more volatile day by day. Neso can no longer model the system. And if you can’t forecast the system, how can you claim to run it securely?’
Last year’s 16-hour power cut in Spain and Portugal – widely blamed on problems caused by vast solar farms – led to eight deaths directly but is likely to have caused 165 more in the following two days.
One Neso whistleblower told the MoS: ‘It’s getting worse day by day. We’re now flying blind with the plane on fire. It’s not a matter of “if” there’s going to be a major blackout, it’s an engineering certainty.’
‘If we overload parts of the system, that means things will catch fire or explode. We’d have cables crashing to the floor, perhaps over motorways, then arcing over, spraying flames, before they hit the floor.’
They warned that colleagues are now ‘re-running the models’ to try to alter the calculations and claim there was no problem on June 23.
A spokesman for Neso said it would not be commenting further.
A spokesman for Ofgem said: ‘We are undertaking a review of whether Neso complied with regulations and what lessons can be learnt to improve system security for the future.’
