LONDON - Britain's National Grid on Wednesday reported a fire at its IFA1 interconnector site in Sellindge in Kent and it has been evacuated.
Interconnexion France-Angleterre (IFA) is a joint venture between the French transmission operator RTE and National Grid, operating a 2 gigawatt subsea electricity link between Britain and France.
"There has been a fire at our IFA interconnector site in Sellindge and emergency services are in attendance," a National Grid spokesperson said.
"The site has been evacuated and the safety of our staff, emergency teams and local residents is our highest priority. We will provide a further update in due course," the spokesperson said.
The IFA1 interconnector is expected to be offline until Oct. 13, Elexon data shows.
The outage comes at a time when UK baseload power prices are at record highs due to soaring gas prices, high carbon prices, tight supply and other maintenance outages.
The IFA2 interconnector, a second link between Britain and France commissioned in 2020, is operating and not affected.
