Britain’s electricity grid still reliant on fax machines

Faxes are still being used to run the UK’s electricity grids, the Government’s energy systems operator has admitted. The outdated machines are being used by the National Energy System Operator, which is overseen by Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, to communicate with power producers and traders about generating capacity and prices. A Neso spokesman said: “We do have fax machines in our control centre so that we can continue to receive information from some market participants that still use fax machines as their primary communication option to relay their information to us.” The machines are a legacy – Neso was part of National Grid, a commercial company, until just a few weeks ago. The Neso spokesman said: “We are currently undertaking a project to replace the fax machines with an electronic system to be in place in the coming weeks.” A report in New Power, a trade newsletter, in May said the faxes were used to support a range of “critical functions” including communications with control room engineers, adding the machines were “baked in to the Grid Code that governs the parties’ actions”. It added: “The ‘received receipt’ which confirms a fax has been successfully received is particularly important when fulfilling Grid Code obligations such as the issue of system warnings.” The revelation follows a similar admission by Northern Rail.