摘要：Why was Heathrow airport slow to resume operations after substation fire?Time spent switching power supply and rebooting systems r

正文翻译

Why was Heathrow airport slow to resume operations after substation fire?
Time spent switching power supply and rebooting systems raises doubts over resilience of Europe’s largest aviation hub

为何希思罗机场在变电站火灾后恢复运营如此缓慢？
电源切换和系统重启耗费的时间，引发人们对欧洲最大航空枢纽抗风险能力的质疑。

Heathrow started its first flights after the shutdown on Friday evening © Carlos Jasso/Reuters

周五晚暂停运营后，希思罗机场已恢复首批航班起降"

Heathrow is coming under growing scrutiny over its decision to close for nearly 24 hours following a fire at a nearby electrical substation, even though it was still able to receive power from other parts of the grid.
Senior management at Europe’s busiest airport took the decision to close on Friday as they battled to restore full power to a complex that uses the same amount of electricity as a small city.
But John Pettigrew, chief executive of National Grid which operates Britain’s high-voltage transmission network, told the Financial Times that two other substations serving Heathrow were working throughout the incident, meaning the airport never lost potential access to power.
As concerns grow over the resilience of the UK’s critical infrastructure, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer on Monday said “there are questions” for airport executives to answer over the scale of disruption.
Why wasn’t there enough backup power to run the airport?

希思罗机场因附近变电站火灾关闭近24小时的决定，正面临愈发强烈的质疑——尽管该机场本仍可通过电网其他部分维持电力供应。
作为欧洲最繁忙的机场，其管理层上周五决定暂停运营，当时他们正全力为这座耗电量堪比小型城市的航空枢纽恢复全面供电。
然而，负责运营英国高压输电网的国家电网公司首席执行官约翰·佩蒂格鲁向英国《金融时报》透露，其实。机场关闭期间另有两座为希思罗供电的变电站始终正常运行，这说明机场从未失去潜在电力供应渠道。
随着各界对英国关键基础设施抗灾能力的担忧加剧，基尔斯塔默首相周一表示，机场管理层需要就此次大规模停运事件'作出解释'。
为何机场没有配备足够的备用电源维持运转？"

Heathrow has enough diesel generators to power critical operations, including its control tower and runway lights, and passengers were able to safely leave the airport late on Thursday night after the outage was first ed. But its generators do not have the capacity to run the whole airport.
Simon Gallagher, managing director of UK Networks Services, a consultancy specialising in power grids, said few other airports have better backup supplies than Heathrow.
But he said other industries “are far more resilient”.
“The airport industry as a whole has this issue with resilience . . . other industries with even bigger connections ensure they never go off supply,” he said.

希思罗机场虽配备有足够驱动关键设施（包括空管塔台与跑道指示灯）的柴油发电机，且在周四夜间首次断电后已确保乘客安全离场，但其备用电力并不具备支撑整个机场正常运转的能力。
英国专业电网领域咨询公司董事总经理西蒙·加拉格尔表示，很少有其他机场配置的备用电源能达到希思罗机场的水平。但他也同时指出，其他行业'抗灾能力明显更强'。
'整个航空业在抗灾能力建设上存在系统性缺陷……即使其他更大规模的行业都能确保永不中断供电。'

How does Heathrow’s resilience compare?
A nearby data centre run by Ark Data Centres, which is equipped with 12 emergency generators, was also affected by Friday’s substation fire, but says it managed to avoid disruption by switching on its backup supply.
“I don’t think that the people buying services off me would buy them without this resilience built in,” said Huw Owen, Ark’s chief executive.
A 2023 US government found one large hub airport ed having 10 diesel fuel generators and enough fuel on site to power the entire airport for three weeks. The airport was seen as an outlier, analysts said.
Resilience must “strike the right balance between risks and costs”, said Olivier Jankovec, director-general of trade group Airports Council International Europe. “Ensuring minimum disruptions and keeping operations going as much as possible is simply not always possible — especially when faced with rare and extreme events.”

希思罗的抗灾能力究竟处于何种水平？
同样受周五变电站火灾影响的Ark数据中心（配备12台应急发电机）表示，其通过及时启用备用电源成功避免了业务中断。
Ark数据中心首席执行官休·欧文表示：'若没有这种内建的抗灾能力，我认为客户根本不会使用我们的服务。'
美国政府2023年一项调研发现，某大型枢纽机场配置了10台柴油发电机及可维持三周运转的现场燃料储备，但分析师指出该案例属行业特例。
欧洲国际机场协会总干事奥利维尔·扬科维奇强调，抗灾能力建设必须'在风险与成本间找到精准平衡点'。'既要确保最低限度的运行中断，又要最大限度维持运营——但面对偶发极端事件时，这往往难以兼顾。'

Why did it take so long to restart if power was available?
While the fire took North Hyde substation out of operation, two others remained capable of providing power to the airport. But in order to access the power from the remaining two substations, Heathrow said it had to “reconfigure” its internal electrical networks.
In practice, this meant the airport had to send technicians to its own power distribution points, where they physically toggled circuit breakers to disconnect Heathrow from North Hyde and reconnect it to the other stations.

关键疑问：既然电力未断，为何恢复耗时如此之久？
尽管北海德变电站因火灾停运，但另两座变电站仍具备向机场供电的能力。希思罗机场表示，要接入这两座变电站的电力，需对其内部电网进行'重构配置'。
实际操作中，机场技术团队需前往自主配电节点，通过物理切换断路器实现双重操作：先切断与北海德变电站的连接，再接入其他两座变电站。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

The airport also had to shut down, restart and systematically test hundreds of its systems before it could resume operations.

机场还必须关闭、重新启动，并对数百个系统进行系统测试后，才能恢复运营。

Heathrow said: “Given Heathrow’s size and operational complexity, safely restarting operations after a disruption of this magnitude was a significant challenge.”
It is unclear how long each step of the process took, and some experts said they were surprised by the length of time it took to return the airport to normal operation.
Heathrow announced at 4.30am on Friday that it would close until midnight, and by 12.30pm it had begun restarting its systems. By 4pm the airport was “100 per cent confident that all systems were safely operating”, said transport secretary Heidi Alexander. The first flights restarted around 7pm.
“In some ways, this seems to [have been] a process failure,” said David Wallom, professor of informatics at Oxford university. “It seems like Heathrow had never considered the possibility of this scale of failure.”

希思罗机场表示：“考虑到希思罗机场的规模以及运营复杂性，在遭受如此重大破坏后安全恢复运营是一项重大挑战。”
目前尚不清楚系统恢复过程每个环节所耗时间，一些专家表示，对机场恢复正常运营所需时长表示震惊。
周五凌晨4点30分，希思罗宣布关闭至午夜；中午12点30分启动系统重启程序。交通大臣海蒂·亚历山大表示，至下午4点时机场已'百分百确认所有系统安全运行'。首批航班于晚7点左右复飞。
牛津大学信息学教授戴维·瓦隆指出：'从某些层面看，这暴露出希思罗机场流程缺陷。该机场似乎从未考虑过解决可能可能出现大规模故障的应急预案。'

Should Heathrow have been better prepared?
All contingency planning requires a “weighing up of the economics”, said Malte Jansen, an energy policy researcher at Sussex university.
“No technical system will be 100 per cent fail-proof,” he said. “I didn’t get the feeling this was a reckless design — the system is designed to be reliable and a very unlikely case has come to fruition.”
Nevertheless, power industry executives said Heathrow should have been better prepared given its status as Europe’s busiest airport. The ability to switch power quickly “should be a minimum standard”, said one executive.

希思罗机场是否应做好更为充分的准备？
萨塞克斯大学能源政策研究员马尔特·詹森表示，所有应急预案都需进行'经济性权衡'。
'没有任何技术系统能实现百分百故障免疫，'他补充道，'我不认为这是草率的设计——系统本就追求可靠性，只是恰巧触发极低概率事件。'
然而，电力行业高管强调，作为欧洲最为繁忙的机场，希思罗理应具有更为完备的应急预案。某高管直言：'快速切换电源本应是最低标准。'

Firefighters work to douse the flames at North Hyde substation near Heathrow © AFP via Getty Images

正在希思罗机场附近海德变电站灭火的消防员
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

A 2014 by consultancy Jacobs, prepared as part of an earlier Heathrow expansion push, said “even a brief interruption to electricity supplies could have a long-lasting impact”.
But it concluded “Heathrow is equipped with on-site generation and appears to have resilient electricity supplies that are compliant with regulations and standards”.
Heathrow has spent a total of £7.4bn in capital expenditure on the airport since 2014, including on new security scanners. But at a time when landing fees have risen, airlines have criticised its owners for spending this money inefficiently, leaving the airport with ageing infrastructure.

2014年，雅各布斯咨询公司为希思罗机场早期扩建计划的建议报告中表示：'即便短暂断电亦可能引发长期影响。'
但结论仍认定'希思罗配有现场发电设备，或可拥有符合法规和标准的弹性电力供应'。
自2014年以来，思罗共计投入74亿英镑，包含新型安检扫描仪，用于机场资本支出。但随着起降费的上涨，航司批评其运营方资金使用效率低下，导致机场基础设施老化。"

来源：龙腾网看世界