This is why a comprehensive investigation is needed to ensure the details are known and all lessons learned or, unfortunately, re-learned.
The trains were built to a environmental tolerance spec, and shutting down when that spec is exceeded seems like a reasonable thing to do. Having an expert test that all the safety systems are still working properly after they've been exposed to conditions they weren't designed for also seems prudent.
Do you think people should pay higher ticket prices / more tax to fund trains that can tolerate a wider range of input frequencies, given how rarely these sorts of events happen?
Yes, they were built to a spec. According to the official technical report[1] these trains DID NOT experience anything outside that spec. The shut down was not supposed to occur. The trains are simply defective and both manufacturer and operator testing failed to reveal these defects. There is no other reasonable conclusion. Defective, inadequately tested trains.
> Having an expert test that all the safety systems are still working properly after they've been exposed to conditions they weren't designed for also seems prudent.
This bit of guesswork is also contradicted in the official report as the manufacturer has committed to providing a system update to permit operation to resume WITHOUT any of your supposed 'prudence.' Resuming operation on power recovery without intervention by technicians is the specified, expected behavior. This is a separate defect that also survived whatever obviously inadequate testing regime was supposedly in effect.
> Do you think people should pay higher ticket prices / more tax to fund trains that can tolerate a wider range of input frequencies, given how rarely these sorts of events happen?
Since the official conclusion and subsequent response by the manufacturer both show the trains were specified to tolerate these conditions the extraordinary costs you imagine are a fiction; the cost has already been paid. No higher ticket prices required. And since these conditions were specified we also know they were indeed anticipated despite their infrequency.
Both the manufacturer and the operator failed here. They got caught with their pants down. You may not like hearing that for whatever reason but that's the bottom line and inventing excuses won't change it.
Similarly, the grid's license gives them a ±1% variation around 50Hz (so ±0.5Hz from https://www.nationalgrideso.com/balancing-services/frequency...).
So we have a power anomaly where the frequency moved >0.125Hz/s and dropped well below the 49.5Hz license threshold. I don't know what the procurement spec was, but I'd be very surprised if this event was "in-spec" for the trains, so in the absence if this it's probably reasonable to say that GP is incorrect.
Transformers get quite unhappily melty if you drop the frequency too much, so if your cooling system isn't designed to cope with this, it's probably better to shut down than have an exciting fire.
* Wider tolerance means heavier electrical and cooling systems, increasing both capital outlay and operating cost for both track wear and maintenance.
* The trains procured were essentially "off the shelf" from Siemens and would have been designed and manufactured for other operators before the DfT put the tender together. A wider operating tolerance would have therefore either ruled out the Siemens trains, or at least significantly upped the cost as they would have had to redesign them.
An annual season ticket from St Albans to London is about £3,600. How much more should that passenger (as well as the taxpayer) be paying so that they can travel on trains that work when this type of event happens? How often does this type of event happen?
> This is utterly inexcusable for a train given the amount of disruption caused by multiple lines being clogged by failed trains in multiple places.
People being stuck on trains for a few hours is pretty far down the severity list of "things that could go wrong" when the power goes out. That said, what I do think the outcome will be here is they'll figure out if/how the driver can self-reset this type of issue rather than requiring a fitter to travel out.
This is why I am very surprised when I read that hospitals generators failing to take over is just "one of those things".
It's like the 'old' saying that you don't have backups until you test recovery from backups...
> None of these seem like "bad management"
They do seem like bad management because to me it looks like these issues were not taken seriously.
> problems of the sort you're likely to run into if you have to activate an emergency procedure you haven't needed to use in a decade.
That's bad management right there if an organisation's emergency procedure has been collecting dust for a decade.
But not bad management by the Grid.
But in general a worrying aspect of what happened is that there seems to have been oversights all over the place (grid, hospitals, railways, etc).
There are lots of reasons why hospitals lose power, which is why they all have backup generators.
Ipswich's backup generator had a faulty battery. This is nothing to do with the grid. This is entirely the fault of the hospital trust. Most of the hospital's backups worked.
https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/ipswich-hospital-blackout...
> A spokeswoman said: "Our initial investigation has shown that at 4.52pm on Friday, August 9, we lost our electricity supply until 5pm. We have 11 generators at Ipswich Hospital and all of them worked immediately.
> "What we have found is that the battery which automatically operates one of the switch over systems from mains power to generator power was faulty despite being within its recommended life.
Here's the trust document talking about the new installation when it was put in.
http://www.ipswichhospital.nhs.uk/aboutourhospital/Documents...
> Electrical High Voltage Infrastructure was a critically important project to the Trust in providing a resilient high voltage electrical network to the hospital. Through a range of electrical projects, including the replacement and upgrading of outpatients generator ‘C’, the maternity generator project and the upgrading of the high voltage switchgear for the forthcoming biofuels project, this represented a total overall investment in excess of £2m. Virtually all the Trust’s electrical switchgear has now been improved and modernised. Along with the new backup generators the hospital is protected for years to come and a major significant risk to hospital has been dealt with.
In this case, it was like asking somebody to be able to catch a ball, they say they are ready and yet fail to catch that ball when you thru it to them. Is that the fault of the person who throws the ball or the person that was not prepared to catch the ball when they said they could.
In this instance it falls into the infortunate situation, and from what I can tell, you can't lay blame onto anybody or party for the failure and it is just one of those things. Sure leasons will be learned, but from the grid procedure in this hospital case, there will be no change I can see that would be learned. However the Hospital will be learning from this and may have more frequent testing and checks of their failover, may make changes. So if blame is to be leveraged upon anybody - you could say it would be from the party that had to make changes. But in this instance, would that be fair. Hence I would call this unfortunate and whilst lessons will be learned, you can not lay blame out of those lessons all the time. However - if it happens again and those same mistakes transpire - then, maybe you have some grounds to lay some blame.
I fully agree with you that this is the likely outcome.
It seems that one of the commenters work for the National Grid or related so might be a bit partial...
* the railways didn't have traction power disconnected -- but one type of (new) train saw the within-specification frequency drop, shut down, and in many cases needed a fitter to go out and restart it. Everything else behind a dead train was stuck. I imagine the train company are discussing this with their supplier...
* Ipswich hospital had a power outage, but that was because their own systems disconnected from the grid when they saw the frequency drop, and then they had a problem with one of their generators.
*One regional airport seems to have been accidentally not on the list of key sites not to disconnect -- sounds like an admin snafu, and has now been fixed.
None of these seem like "bad management" -- they are a collection of relatively minor, entirely unrelated, problems of the sort you're likely to run into if you have to activate an emergency procedure you haven't needed to use in a decade.