Discontinued operations
About discontinued operations
Principal operations
During 2008/09, our discontinued operations comprised the Ravenswood generation station that was sold on 26 August 2008, KeySpan Communications that was sold on 25 July 2008 and the KeySpan engineering companies, one of which was sold on 11 July 2008 with another two sold subsequent to the year end. The Ravenswood generation station was sold to TransCanada for $2.9 billion (£1.6 billion).
During 2007/08, in addition to the above activities, discontinued operations also included our UK and US wireless infrastructure operations, and our Basslink electricity interconnector in Australia that we sold on 3 April, 15 August and 31 August 2007 respectively.
Ravenswood
The Ravenswood generation station, a 2,480 MW facility in Queens in New York, is primarily fuelled by natural gas, and provides more than 20% of New York City’s electricity supply. The sale of Ravenswood was a condition of the New York Public Service Commission order approving the acquisition of KeySpan by National Grid.
KeySpan Communications and KeySpan engineering companies
KeySpan Communications operated a fibre optic telecommunications network that extended through parts of New York City, Long Island and New Jersey with over 1,600 route kilometres of network and over 120,000 kilometres of fibre. It also had access to transatlantic cable systems linking Long Island with Paris and London.
The KeySpan engineering companies provided engineering, design and consulting services for commercial, institutional and industrial customers and operated within the northeastern US.