Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
EDF ENERGY NETWORKS
16 SEPTEMBER 2003
Q40 Linda Perham: You do admit that
you were criticised by energywatch, following the incident on
the underground on 28 August, about communications, reporting
to them. They have said in their evidence that the recorded message
said to ring "energywatch" and when the customers did
get through to you there was an inability to receive up-to-date
information.
Mr Cuttill: This is the outage
on 28 August?
Q41 Linda Perham: Yes.
Mr Cuttill: I think as far as
28 August is concerned it is a wholly different event.
Q42 Linda Perham: I am talking about
communication with customers.
Mr Cuttill: And I will get there.
This was an outage, the primary cause of which was an incorrect
installation of a relay on the national grid transmission service.
This was the fact that our network, in terms of being the local
distribution network operator, was intact and was working but
the actual power coming down the lines had stopped. That meant
that the outage for us was about 41 minutes in total. We had 460,000
customers interrupted at 20-past six on the 28th. We had 150,000
back by half-past six, within 11 minutes; we had another 150,000
back by 10 to seven; and we had final restoration at one minute
past seven. The duration is obviously completely different from
the October incident. We were obviously in very close contact
with National Grid Transco as to what was going on on their system,
as to why we had lost all the in-feeds coming into south London.
Obviously our information was driven by what NGT were able to
tell us. At the same time we were trying to put out clear information
in terms of a likely restoration. But the 41 minutes I have described,
as I am sure you can imagine, was a period of a high level of
activity in our control room. We had about 4,000 alarms sound
at the same time when the feeders went off. Our control staff
have immediately have to understand how they are going to put
the network back together when supplies come on. Part of the DTI
investigation is clearly aimed at trying to establish whether
as an industry we could have said something quicker in an outage
that lasted only 41 minutes.
Q43 Linda Perham: It is just as well
it was not 45, is one of the things that came to mind. It seems
to be that is the time that people keep putting because it is
in the news so often. But 41 minutes, yes, definitely not as bad
as nine days.
Mr Cuttill: No.
Q44 Linda Perham: Are you saying
that NGT should have been the ones that informed energywatch?
They had a problem with people phoning them and asking, "What's
going on?" even though it was that time.
Mr Cuttill: Obviously I cannot
answer for when NGT contacted energywatch. Certainly, as far as
our company is concerned, Mr Carey spoke to energywatch . . .
Sorry, our head of communications spoke to energywatch at around
about seven o'clock, half-past seven, something like that. I cannot
remember the exact time we did it. We certainly spoke to them
in the evening. We spoke to Ofgem in terms of the particular incident.
As I say, the primary cause of that was the installation of an
incorrect relay on a cable that should have been able to carry
all of the load for London at that time. So the issue of 28 August
is not an issue about capacity coming down from generation; it
is not about capacity on the network to carry the load. NGT have
four circuits: they had two out on maintenance, they had an alarm
on the third, and the fourth one had an incorrect relay, we now
know. The fourth one had plenty of capacity to hold the load at
that time. The fact is, it is a bit like having a five amp fuse
in a plug instead of a 13 amp fuse, to put it simply, and the
load then took the incorrect relay out. That was the primary cause
of that incident.
Q45 Chairman: We realise the DTI
are going into this, but most of us do not have even GCSE qualifications
in electrical engineering, and, frankly, when the lights go out
you do not give a damn who is to blame or whose one amp fuse is
in the wrong socket, you just want an answer. It is not your fault,
we will take it up with NGT, but there still does not seem to
be in this world of high-speed, electrically generated telecommunications
the ability to get simple messages—apart from "It ain't
me, guv"—to the people to whom folk would like to go
when the light goes out in the fridge or the telly stops in the
middle of whatever it is they are wanting to watch. With mobile
phones, nowadays people will click on right away. You get the
feeling that, though you have learned a lot, there are one or
two things . . . I am not necessarily fingering you, but the difficulty
is that since you are the people to whom most Londoners pay their
electricity bills it is around your throats that their hands will
immediately go.
Mr Cuttill: It is probably not
worth getting into a debate about the fact that they do not actually
pay me because I am the distributor, they pay their supplier that
they choose.
Q46 Chairman: You are all tarred
with the one brush, I can tell you. The mark of Cain is on your
forehead.
Mr Cuttill: I would say that in
this particular incident, within the first 10 or 15 minutes we
had certainly fielded about 30 calls from media organisations,
but within that 15 minutes it was still not entirely clear as
to what the cause of the incident was—and if you do not
know the cause it is quite difficult . . . One of the lessons
we did learn from October 2002 is: Do not guess when the restoration
might come—because you would rather say it is going to be
more and get it back quicker than say it is going to be short
and it takes longer. The pressures on both NGT and ourselves as
the local operator were such at that time as to understand for
ourselves why we had 4,000 alarms going off in our control room.
That is, without doubt, a very, very significant incident. My
recollection was that at about 10 minutes to seven NGT were able
to confirm that it was not, thank goodness, an act of terrorism—because
that was the first question being put to us—and by that
time we had got a lot of our customers back. But we understand
and have already started to work with London Underground, because
of the impact on the London Underground service, in terms of that.
I am sure that is a debate for another day.
Q47 Chairman: Summing up, you are
damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Mr Cuttill: It feels like that
on occasions.
Q48 Mr Hoyle: I think you have touched
on the 0800 number and, quite rightly, in the memorandum you feel
that BT may fail you if there is a significant break in supply.
What is the 0800 number actually doing? I do not know if you have
ever tried one of these 0800 numbers but I find the most frustrating
utilities—ie, yourselves—in electricity breaks, when
you ring them, eventually you may get through to a recorded message—and
I say eventually—and it says, "We are aware there is
a fault in your area. This fault is being dealt with." End
of story. The problem there is that you may think that answers
the problem but it does not, because you find out that your customers
then ring people around here and say, "I've heard a recorded
message but it does not give me any further information"
and we then start fielding your calls and the frustration of your
customers who cannot speak to anybody because it is a recorded
message. Unfortunately, the advantage of the media is that they
have the hotline number. You have your press office set up and
the press come first and the customers come second. How do they
know that you are aware that there is a fault in their remote
village or wherever? I think it is that difficulty. Okay, you
have the recorded message and, say, 85% are happy at that, but
there ought to be a further way that, if you stay on the line,
you may actually be able to put your views across, or there may
be a further serious incident. The other problem I seem to find
is that, even if they are a nursing home, they ring the 0800 number.
In their case they may have 40 old dears who need to be fed, with
no heating, no way of cooking because of the remoteness of the
home, but they are treated just like everybody else. There is
no priority within how you deal with those particular people.
I am wondering (1) the 0800 number—what further ways are
there of contacting the company?—and (2) what priorities
are you putting into your customers?—whether it is a nursing
home, whether it is a school, I wonder whether that counts and
whether there is a special number they can ring. Under my circumstance,
in the north-west, no, there was not.
Mr Cuttill: Perhaps I may answer
that question by speaking about our normal running arrangements.
That is probably better than the particular incident of October
last year. In normal running, when the customers call on the network
that we are discussing, the system interrogates the STD code that
they are ringing from, it directs them into a message box and
gives them the specific answer about the fault. We would also
normally give a likely restoration period. So it is a question
of: "Yes, we know. We believe on the information currently
available that it will be three or four hours for restoration."
That is automatically updated. It is back-to-back with our control
system. As we restore, the control system feeds information back
into our messaging service. So it narrows it down, it recognises
an STD code—and it can also now begin to recognise calls
from mobiles as well—and it narrows it down to only the
areas that are still off, apart from those that have been restored.
There is the option, if the customer for ourselves wishes to talk
to an agent, they can. We do not have a system at the moment where
they simply stay on the line; they are provided with another number
to call, they call that number and they will get though to one
of our agents. That is the opportunity, I think, for a customer
who has a real issue to find somebody. One of the other lessons
we found from both our normal running and last year, is that we
now do a lot of calling back of customers who have rung the messaging
service or spoken to an agent, so that we can update them as to
what we understand the restoration to be. In the event of the
example you give in terms of a particular need, then that is very
likely to get back a call from us, so that we can update as to
where we are, and also they can then explain to us particular
circumstances of need. Our contacts with social services, through
our much enhanced arrangements with county councils, enables us
to address that. Finally, in the event of a real problem for a
specific location in perhaps a remote area, there is always the
option for us to deploy standby generation whilst we are making
the final repairs. We have to be careful in terms of putting generation
on—because you have to understand that if you are in a fault
condition you do not want to put power back through a faulty circuit—but,
aside from that, the deployment of standby generation would be
something that we would actively do in the circumstance you describe.
Q49 Mr Hoyle: If I could just run
through that. It sounds great, doesn't it? It sounds wonderful.
Have you ever tried ringing your own numbers when there is a power
cut?
Mr Cuttill: Uh . . .
Q50 Mr Hoyle: Come on, let's be honest.
Mr Cuttill: Certainly—
Q51 Mr Hoyle: I can take it as no.
You can hesitate all day: I will answer it for you.
Mr Cuttill: I think Mr Carey nodded.
Q52 Mr Hoyle: Yes. I was asking yourself
though. But, not to worry, the seriousness about this—and
it has been experienced by Members here—is you ring the
number, you get the recorded message, but you do not go beyond
the recorded message, so you cannot get through to further operators.
It is just not possible to get through to those numbers. I don't
know, say it were your own staff, and you have probably 12 staff
and, say, one thousand people ringing at the same time, there
is no way that the majority can ever get through. What concerns
me—and you have still not recognised it—do you actually
have a list of vulnerable people—and I say "vulnerable",
whether it be old people's homes, a nursery or whatever. Do you
have a list of those, so that if it comes up on an area you can
actually check them and make sure, if they cannot get to you,
that you can get to them? The only other thing, if you could answer
this other point, is I am very intrigued how you know where a
mobile number is ringing from. That sounds very "Big Brother"
and I would be pleased to know how you can work that one out as
well.
Mr Cuttill: On the point, do we
know all customers who are vulnerable: we are aware of certain
circumstances, such as dialysis machines, things like that. As
you will be aware, we do not actually know the actual identity
of a customer. That is the information that the supply business
holds; it is not information that the distributor holds. We have
across our three networks about seven and a half million connected
customers, so it is obviously pretty difficult to understand all
the different aspects of those customers. This is where our linkages
with the county councils must come into play, because they have
that information. They have information and they keep it up-to-date.
Us having the information would require us to keep it up-to-date,
and obviously it changes every day. Our sense is that if we can
continue to work on our relationships with social services through
the county councils, they are the resource to tell us the information
we need, so that they can work with us to tackle those customers
of particular vulnerability.
Mr Hoyle: A lot of faith in the county
council. I will look forward to that.
Q53 Chairman: To what extent do you
make use of local radio?—given that most people have portable
radios at home, particularly the elderly, who find them convenient.
If someone were to phone up, to what extent do you say: "Contact
Radio London? Our main medium of communication will be that."
Do you use that as well?
Mr Cuttill: Again, certainly in
the very significant incidents like the one in—
Q54 Chairman: In October?
Mr Cuttill: In October we were
not very good at it. I was going to say: in January we were much
better at the use of the local media. The trick with the local
media is again about understanding the scale of the incident and
likely restoration because that is what they want to know. In
January, we had much better information in time for the breakfast
shows on the media on the Friday morning—the event having
happened late on the Thursday. So we do use the local media when
the incident is very significant, and also the local media are
very quick to contact us in terms of much smaller scale things.
For instance, BBC Radio Norfolk, or something like that, if they
have a particular incident where they may have three or four thousand
customers off supply for a particular fault, they are quick to
contact us. We do provide as transparent information as we can,
as quickly as we can. It is definitely a way to go forward.
Q55 Chairman: To be perfectly honest,
I find this amazing. In 1978-79 there was a white-out, you may
recall, and in the east of Scotland, Radio Forth, which, I have
to say, is perhaps not the sharpest tool in the telecommunications
box, nonetheless won awards. It is a matter of public record that
the service they provided via the local medium was absolutely
outstanding. One would have thought that your communications departments
in their myriad forms would have known about that kind of thing
and simply built it in. As politicians, if we want to get something
across, we will use whatever of the blunt or sharp tools come
to hand. But people like yourselves in many respects have a far
greater incentive than we have, and I just find it astounding
that this comes as a kind of afterthought, that you do not use
the medium which does not require the electricity that comes down
your wires because it is run by batteries in the main. I find
it amazing that you are that slow in an area like this. As you
say, you are the biggest electricity company in the country and
you trip up on a small thing like that.
Mr Cuttill: I do not think we
trip up on our normal on-going running arrangements. I have
acknowledged that in October we did not use all of the avenues
open to us.
Q56 Chairman: This comes down to
contingency planning.
Mr Cuttill: Correct.
Q57 Chairman: It is not a question
of: "It has not happened before". For God's sake, you
are dealing with something that is a matter of life and death,
and it also is a source of fantastic anxiety. Where it is not
the perceived problem of heat or cold or whatever, it is the fact
that folk are just terribly worried on being isolated. I just
find it astounding that you have not thought this through with
sufficient rigour.
Mr Cuttill: First of all, we understand
absolutely the magnitude of the responsibility that we have in
terms of the provision of this essential service. I think it is
incorrect to say that we have not thought it through. Prior to
October 2002 we had made use of the media on many occasions. It
happened in October 2002, as we have acknowledged, that we did
not have available the most accurate information in terms of scale
of impact and likely restoration period. That is the lesson we
have learned. The use of the media is something that we have used
all the time. It is not that October was just this extraordinary
wake-up call that said, "There is this thing called media
out there that you can use." It was the information that
we were giving to them and it is right to acknowledge that we
did not get ahead of communication curve in the week in October
2002 at all. Our performance subsequent to that, with all the
steps we have put in place in terms of management focus and attention,
meant that we handled it much better by using those avenues.
Q58 Chairman: I do not dispute that
for a moment. All that I find disturbing is that, here, zero starts
in October 2002, and that in a number of respects all you can
say is, "Well, it was so bad we had not even imagined it
would be like that" and "When it was as bad as that,
it took us a wee while to realise how bad it actually was"
and "We have never really thought about what happened in
1987"—which was not as bad but we still could have
had the same problems then. I am saying that in periods as we
had in 1978-79—which I think was the last extreme cold period,
really sustained period in the UK as a whole—there was experience
to be gained. Just because your owners are French and you are
privatised does not mean to say you should have forgotten lessons
that public enterprises had probably just about absorbed in the
period prior to that. This is an observation that it is not unreasonable
to make.
Mr Cuttill: I would say in response
that I do not believe that lessons previous to '02 had been forgotten
in any way. We have acknowledged that we did not do a good enough
job in that week. That does not mean to say that we had completely
wiped our memories of everything that went on before. We just
did not do a good enough job in that week—and we have acknowledged
that, and, as I have said today, we register our apologies for
that. That is the key lesson around '02 for us as an organisation.
I think, as the industry as a whole, there is significant evidence
that lessons are learned, and it is about understanding the impact
on you in one of these very severe incidents.
Chairman: I think we will move on now
to Sir Robert Smith.
Q59 Sir Robert Smith: One quick thing
that has come out when you were answering the Chairman about you
are a regional monopoly distribution company.
Mr Cuttill: Yes.
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