Seconds after a catastrophic series of power outages struck across the UK in the summer of 2019, a phone rang in the control room of the Dinorwig hydropower plant in north Wales. It was Britain’s energy system operator requesting an immediate deluge of electricity to help prevent a wide-scale blackout crippling Britain’s power grids.
The response was swift, and in the end just under one million people were left without power for less than 45 minutes. While trains were stuck on lines for hours and hospitals had to revert to backup generators, that phone call prevented Britain’s worst blackout in a decade from being far more severe.
