The winter that went better than expected

The second war winter passed with considerably less disruption than the first. That outcome had specific causes and it is worth attributing them correctly.

What had changed

Stockpiles of matching replacement equipment, so a strike meant days of repair rather than weeks of searching.

Physical protection around the most critical substations, converting near misses into survivable damage.

Air defence explicitly allocated to energy infrastructure, which is a decision about priorities under conditions where everything needs defending.

Repair crews pre-positioned regionally rather than dispatched from a centre.

And import capacity from the European network, available at peak when domestic generation could not cover demand.

What it did not mean

It did not mean the threat had reduced. The following spring demonstrated that with a concentrated campaign against generation itself.

A quiet winter is evidence that preparation worked, not that the problem went away — and the distinction matters because the temptation after a good winter is to spend the summer on something else.

What I would record

Nobody photographs a transformer sitting in a warehouse. That transformer is the reason a hospital had power in January.