Planet Energy unveils £4m security overhaul at flagship Facility 8

Planet Energy has switched on a £4m security overhaul at Facility 8, the company’s most sensitive generation site, in what its leadership describes as a decisive answer to a rising tide of attacks on the national grid.

The programme, delivered by specialist contractor Sentrex Access Systems, replaces the site’s ageing entry controls with biometric fingerprint readers on every internal door, a full reissue of staff identity passes to a new secure design, and hardened access to the Local Equipment Rooms that house the plant’s industrial controls.

“Facility 8 is now among the best-protected industrial sites in Europe. Frankly, you would struggle to get past the front door.”

“This is about staying ahead,” said Gareth Local, Planet Energy’s director of operations, at a briefing on site. “Facility 8 is now among the best-protected industrial sites in Europe. Frankly, you would struggle to get past the front door, let alone into a control room.”

Inside the upgrade

Sentrex Access Systems, which has fitted access control at ports and water treatment works across the country, said the Planet Energy contract was “one of the most comprehensive we have delivered”. The firm’s engineers will be a regular presence on site through the summer as the phased rollout completes, wing by wing.

Each member of staff has been issued a new photographic pass carrying the redesigned Planet Energy badge, part of what the company calls a “clean-sheet” approach to who can go where. The old passes, some more than a decade old, are being withdrawn.

The centrepiece is the treatment of the Local Equipment Rooms — the unglamorous but critical spaces where a modern plant’s control systems live. “People picture a power station as turbines and steam,” said a Sentrex engineer on site. “The bit that actually matters is a locked room the size of a garage, full of quiet grey boxes. That’s what we’ve built the wall around.”

A guided tour, in daylight

The company was in confident enough mood to invite this newspaper inside. Our tour began at the main gate, where every visitor and contractor signs the same paper logbook, and ran through reception into the plant’s west wing — a long service corridor off which the numbered Local Equipment Rooms open, one after another, like doors on a hotel landing.

We were walked the length of it, to LER 3: the last door on the corridor, and the one Planet Energy is proudest of. A new Sentrex reader sat beside the frame, its little light blinking green. “That one’s behaving today,” the engineer said, which on the evidence of the corridor was a lower bar than it sounded.

The tour came with a handout. Planet Energy has, unusually, been happy to publish a schematic of the west wing — a straightforward floor plan showing the corridor, the numbered LERs and, at the far end, the position of LER 3. The company said the drawing was part of the “openness” it wanted to demonstrate around the upgrade, and were content for us to reproduce it here.

Sentrex’s people will be a familiar sight in high-vis on that corridor for weeks yet, the firm said, as the readers are commissioned door by door. Daytime visits, it seems, are part of the furniture at Facility 8 this summer — provided, of course, you sign the book.

‘A statement of intent’

Industry has been rattled by a run of incidents against infrastructure operators, and regulator Ofgem has pressed suppliers to demonstrate resilience. Planet Energy is keen to be seen leading rather than reacting.

“Our people should feel proud walking in every morning,” Mr Local said. “This is a statement of intent. We are telling anyone who might be watching that this site is closed to them.”

Whether anyone was, in fact, watching, the company did not say.