When the Worst UK Storm in 30 Years Exposed What Protection Relays Can't See

How 380 Multifunction Fault Recorders Prevented Catastrophic Failures During Historic Winter Crisis—And Discovered Hidden Equipment Problems Relays Would Never Detect

February 2010: Scotland faces the worst winter weather in three decades. Up to 61cm of snowfall. Temperatures are plummeting to -19.2°C. Gale-force winds. 45,000 homes without power. And on one critical 132kV network serving this £10 billion infrastructure, 24 fault events occurred in a single day—revealing equipment problems that traditional protection relays would have completely missed.

The 8-Second Failure That Should Have Been Catastrophic

During the first fault of the storm, three circuit breakers operated normally within 120ms. But one breaker stuck closed, continuing to feed fault current for 3 seconds until the arc self-extinguished. Five seconds later, the breaker finally opened. Without comprehensive fault recording capturing the complete event across multiple substations with synchronized data, this progressive failure would have remained undetected—setting up potential catastrophe during subsequent faults.

What You'll Discover:

Strategic Multi-Function Deployment – Learn how this UK utility uses 380 standalone fault recorders providing conventional recording, slow-scan monitoring, power quality analysis, synchrophasor measurements, and SCADA data replacement from a single installation across 400kV to 132kV systems.

Real Storm Performance Data – Review detailed analysis of 24 fault events across 10 circuits during extreme weather: fault currents, clearance times, voltage profiles, and an 81.8% successful auto-reclosure rate despite severe conditions.

Circuit Breaker Condition Monitoring – Discover how adding trip coil current and auxiliary contacts to fault recorders provides breaker health insights, including excessive 40ms pole stagger that indicated sticking mechanisms—problems undetectable by protection relays.

CVT Failures Caught Early – See how voltage transformer perturbations triggering on under-voltage conditions revealed transient overvoltage protection circuit operation that would have eventually caused phase voltage loss and protection system failure.

Geomagnetically Induced Current Monitoring – Explore how the same recorders monitor DC currents up to 13A that drive transformer cores into saturation.

Download this case study to see how comprehensive fault monitoring performs under real crisis conditions.