Friday’s wave of power cuts should prompt questions about Britain’s infrastructure

Editorial: It is a no-brainer that we should use this period of low interest rates to finance an investment in improving our electricity supply

What caused the power cut and could it happen again? (PA)

When you press a light switch, you expect the light to come on. The wave of power cuts that swept across Britain on Friday are a reminder of how much an advanced economy depends on a constant, reliable supply of electricity. According to the official estimates, nearly a million people were directly affected. The number indirectly affected – whose lives were disrupted in some way or other – will have been much higher. It is also likely, sadly, that some people will have been injured or harmed by the loss of power.

The National Grid promises to learn lessons from what it correctly says was “an incredibly rare event”. We should in fairness wait until a full explanation is available as to why two power stations having problems at the same time should collapse large parts of the grid. But meanwhile it is equally fair to point out three things.

First, this event has occurred at a time of relatively low power demand. This is not an unusually cold snap in the middle of winter. The system should not be under pressure. Second, the whole purpose of the grid is to cope with exactly this sort of situation, and we have more than a century of experience of balancing demand with supply to avoid power failures.