Electricity Grid Failure (Wind Turbines)

– in the Scottish Parliament at on 21 May 2014.

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Photo of Alex Johnstone Alex Johnstone Conservative

3. To ask the Scottish Government whether it has undertaken any further investigation into whether an overreliance on wind turbines as a source of electricity played a role in the grid failure on 16 April 2014. (S4O-03258)

Photo of John Swinney John Swinney Scottish National Party

On 22 April, I set out the reasons for the power outage of 16 April and submitted to the Scottish Parliament information centre a comprehensive note outlining the contributing factors.

Photo of Alex Johnstone Alex Johnstone Conservative

On 22 April, the cabinet secretary told me that Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution had identified a faulty electronic relay as the cause of the problem. However, engineering opinion that in many cases has been volunteered to me has suggested that, far from failing, the relay did exactly what it was supposed to do and that the cause of the trip has yet to be identified. Will the cabinet secretary undertake to make SSE’s engineering incident report available to allow independent opinion to be sought?

Photo of John Swinney John Swinney Scottish National Party

On 22 April, I relayed to the Parliament the information supplied to me by SSE that a fault in the electronic relay at the Knocknagael substation near Inverness was the root cause of the outage. In addition, SSE has advised me that it is engaging closely with technical experts at Siemens, which is the manufacturer of the relay, to ensure that that fault will not occur on SSE’s network in the future.

SSE’s position that the reason for the power outage was the reason that I gave to Parliament back in April could not be clearer. I hope that that gives Mr Johnstone the reassurance that he is looking for that the examination by those who are responsible for operating the grid identified that as the particular problem that led to the circumstances in April this year.