UK power: an everchanging challenge for civil engineers

This paper provides an overview of Britain's continually evolving electricity supply industry and how it got to where it is today. In an ever-changing social, political and technical environment, the industry has gone from private to public ownership and back again, and the benefits of a partial return to distributed generation are now becoming apparent. Continually rising demand and an increased emphasis on sustainability and security are now leading to further restructuring. All of this continues to supply a rich variety of challenges and opportunities for civil engineers, whose role in developing, upgrading and maintaining the nation's power-system infrastructure remains as vital as ever.