The sky lit up like a strobe light over southern England last night. A violent lightning storm, the kind that rattles windows and wakes children, swept across the country. For a few hours, the National Grid faced its toughest test since the August 2019 blackout.
But this time, the system held. No widespread power cuts. No political fallout. Yet.
Whitehall sources tell me the grid was pushed to the limit. Over 30,000 lightning strikes were recorded between midnight and 4am. National Grid’s control room in Wokingham was on high alert. They deployed rapid-response teams to substations in Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire.
“It was a near miss,” one industry insider confided. “A few more strikes in the wrong place and we’d have been looking at cascading failures.”
The timing is awkward for the government. Energy security is already a live grenade. The PM’s net-zero agenda is under fire from his own backbenches. Any hint of grid fragility would have been seized upon by the usual suspects. The Net Zero Scrutiny Group was ready to pounce.
But the grid held. National Grid’s statement was carefully worded: “The system performed as designed. There were no loss of supply incidents.” Translation: We dodged a bullet.
For now, the storm has passed. But the political weather is still unsettled. The question being asked in Westminster is not whether the grid can handle a storm. It’s whether it can handle the next one. And the one after that. With ageing infrastructure and increasing reliance on intermittent renewables, the margin for error is shrinking.
The PM’s team is briefing quietly that the system’s resilience is a testament to their investment. But the Treasury is pushing back on the cost of upgrades. A classic Whitehall standoff.
Meanwhile, the Met Office says more storms are possible this week. The National Grid insists it’s ready. We’ll see.
For now, the lights stayed on. The political damage is contained. But this was a warning shot. The next one might not miss.
