Raphael Vassallo
Tuesday’s nationwide blackout had been predicted in an Enemalta report published in June 2006, but despite urgent recommendations to upgrade the Delimara power station before the end of 2008, there has been no significant change to Malta’s total electricity production capacity in the last three years.
As a result, Malta now lacks the reserve capacity necessary to guarantee a stable electricity supply, as evidenced by Tuesday’s total power generation failure at both Malta’s power stations, and confirmed by Enemalta chairman Dr Alex Tranter on Wednesday.
Electricity Generation Plan 2006-2015, still available for viewing on the corporation’s website, was almost 100% accurate in its predictions regarding the present power supply regime:
“It should also be noted that based on the expected growth in demand (MW) the reserve capacity available after the summer of 2007 will be less than 60MW, which means that in case of loss due to a fault in one of the large units (MPS boilers 7 & 8, DPS units 1& 2 or DPS CCGT plant) during the summer months will result in a shortfall in generation capacity resulting in power outages possibly in large areas on the islands.”
Initial enquiries into Tuesday’s incident suggest that it was a boiler at the Marsa Power Station that malfunctioned, causing a domino effect whereby all the plant’s turbines “tripped” one by one – transferring the load onto the Delimara power station, which in turn couldn’t handle the surplus either.
The resulting nine-hour power outage is estimated to have cost the country anywhere up to €10 million; though this figure does not take into consideration the possible loss of foreign investment arising from Enemalta’s subsequent claim that the country’s only large-scale provider of electricity “cannot guarantee” that a similar outage will not recur in future.
For all this, Enemalta chairman Dr Alex Tranter on Wednesday insisted that Malta has “enough reserve capacity to meet peak summertime capacity”: an observation which appears to contradict both the conclusions of the 2006 report – which ironically was compiled from the findings of a seminar in which Dr Tranter himself was a keynote speaker – as well as the week’s events themselves.
These apparent contradictions were highlighted this week by hydrologist and alternative energy pundit Marco Cremona.
“Enemalta’s Generation Plan 2006-2013 says that Enemalta will run out of spare generation capacity by Summer 2009,” Cremona noted in an online comment.
“No investment has been made in increasing generation capacity since the report was prepared even though the report strongly recommended that Enemalta install a new power station by end 2008. So whom is Enemalta’s chairman trying to kid when he says that we have enough generation capacity to meet demand? In saying so, he is contradicting Enemalta’s own conclusions.”
Efforts to clarify this apparent contradiction this week went nowhere. Contacted yesterday over the phone, Dr Tranter said he would only reply to questions sent in writing through the proper channels. However, questions sent by email to Enemalta PRO Ivan Vella on Friday morning were not acknowledged, and by the time we went to print, no reply was forthcoming to similar questions sent by this newspaper directly to the Enemalta chairman.
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