Just last week, National Grid power cuts caused travel chaos for thousands and saw one million homes, businesses and even hospitals across London, the South East, Midlands and North West lose electricity from 5pm on Friday. System operators blamed the 'incredibly rate' cuts on issues with two generators: a gas-fired power station in Little Barford, Bedfordshire and at a wind farm off the coast of Yorkshire. However, reports suggest that the nation had dodged a trio of blackout 'near-misses' in the three months before last week's power outage. National Grid is being investigated by the energy watchdog and is facing criticism from the industry for failing to do enough to prevent blackouts. Industry figures claim that National Grid has known of the increasing risk of a major outage 'for years'. Every month since May has seen a major drop in the grid's frequency, which usually operates at 50Hz.