Government is doing all it can to justify the decision to choose the bid offered by Danish company BWSC for the new extension of the Delimara Power Station.
For this plant, BWSC wants to use eight Wartsila 18V46 medium speed diesel engines. BWSC is offering these engines even though it knows this is not an ideal choice for Malta. In fact, four years ago, on 23 May, Anders Langhorn of BWSC sent detailed information to their representative in Malta, Joseph Mizzi, proving that the medium speed diesel engines that can be operated on heavy fuel oil would not really be fitting for the island. In his document Langhorn says that: “In the evaluation of the total generation cost throughout the lifetime of the plant, it is important to consider the expected economical lifetime of the plant. In estimating the economical lifetime, it is the normal practice among utility companies to assume and economic lifetime for low speed units at least five years longer than for medium speed units.” Not only do these plants have a short lifespan, they also develop serious maintenance problems after only 15 years.
Langhorn’s report says that medium speed engines suffer “significant increase of major breakdowns after 15 years.” Langhorn also quotes from a big insurance company called ‘Swedish Club’ that refers to the unreliability of these engines and their high maintenance costs: “Medium speed engines are over-represented in the claims files” and “the average claims cost per year is five times as high for a medium speed engine than for a low speed engine”.
Langhorn’s technical report on the weaknesses of the medium speed engines also states that their rate of degradation is approximately 1% a year, which is considered higher than others and their efficiency is 48%, lower than others. Their reliability is low, considering that they have 2 to 4% unscheduled outage, which means that their use results in more power failures and cuts than others. Their availability is only 7,600 to 8,100 hours a year, which is shorter than that of other plants. Their technical design leads to more stress on the engines and that is why they have frequent major breakdowns after 15 years. And their spare parts consumption is considered at least $4 per megawatt per hour, which is double than that for other plants.
Despite all these weaknesses – unreliable, more expensive to maintain and a shorter life span – government has chosen these medium speed diesel engines for the new extension of Delimara Power Station. While Warstila will be manufacturing these plants to work on heavy fuel oil in Malta, it is busy converting such engines to work on gas in the rest of the world. The 2007 report ‘Diesel and Gas Turbines Worldwide’ states how Wartsila, the Finnish manufacturer of engine and boiler systems for power plants is “increasingly being commissioned to convert older model Wartsila engines that run on heavy fuel oil to gas and light oil/gas hybrids to help power plants meet their environmental regulations and provide more fuel flexibility and cheaper running costs. These include three in Brazil, four in Pakistan, three in Portugal, three in Turkey, one in Germany and sixteen in Indonesia.”
These and other countries have come to the conclusion that heavy fuel oil-fired plants like the one offered by BWSC for Malta and chosen by government are becoming obsolete due to high running costs, toxic pollutants and high greenhouse emissions. This is also what the PN government had decided three years ago when it approved and published its National generation Plan 2006-2015. It had bound itself not to use a heavy fuel oil plant for the new extension at Delimara for health and economic reasons.
Three years ago the PN government decided that the new plant should be fired on gas but in the meantime wasted more than six years and failed to take any action to invest in the necessary gas supply infrastructure. Their incompetence and mismanagement in the energy sector is already causing us painful water and electricity bills. These will increase to finance new, more expensive investment needed as future plants at Delimara will have to be fired by gas. The supply infrastructure will now cost double what it would have cost us in 2003.
Also, more than €27 million will have to be spent on the BWSC plant to convert it to operate on natural gas in 2015 or shortly after as future environmental regulation will make it impossible for Malta to have heavy fuel oil plants to generate electricity. The Malta Resources Authority earlier on this year recommended that the new plant to be installed at Delimara in 2014 will have to be a combined cycle gas turbine plant that government has just dismissed by choosing the BWSC plant.
A lot of international literature on the subject shows clearly that the only reason some governments choose heavy oil as the fuel to generate their electricity is because it is cheap. But does it lead to cheaper water and electricity bills?
In a report of March 2009 the Australian organization National Toxics Network Inc. says that: “On every other factor such as ease of handling, toxicity, environmental impacts and plant maintenance costs, heavy fuel oils fail to compete with other fossil fuels such as coal, gas and distillate… Heavy fuel oil is essentially the cheapest, dirtiest fuel on the market for generating electricity… Most developed countries have environmental air pollution regulations that heavy fuel oil fired power plants find very difficult to comply with. In order for them to comply they must invest millions of dollars in pollution control equipment which is often better spent on converting the power plant to cleaner fuel sources. While the off-the-shelf price of heavy fuel oil may appear to be cheap compared to other fuels there are trade-offs and hidden costs that actually reduce the economic advantages of heavy fuel oil.”
The same report concludes that the cost of running heavy fuel oil plants compared to running gas fired plants is around 2.7% higher, without even considering the hidden environmental and human health costs. The high sulphur and vanadium content in heavy fuel oil not only leads to the rapid corrosion of the engines of the plant, they also kill through cancer and poison the environment.
To make it comply with our environmental regulations (changed by government during the tendering process and in time to make it possible to award the contract of over 210 million euro to BWSC) pollution control equipment will be installed. We don’t know whether this equipment will work, as it has not been tried and tested elsewhere in the world. If it does not work as promised, it will spread cancer among the local population and damage the environment. The heavy fuel oil to be used in the BWSC plant is so dirty that it will produce at least 31 tons of hazardous waste a day that we have to pay for to have it exported to other countries. All these hidden costs will go into our water and electricity bills.
Evarist Bartolo is a Labour MP and spokesperson for education
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In his document Langhorn says that: “In the evaluation of the total generation cost throughout the lifetime of the plant, it is important to consider the expected economical lifetime of the plant. In estimating the economical lifetime, it is the normal practice among utility companies to assume and economic lifetime for low speed units at least five years longer than for medium speed units.” Not only do these plants have a short lifespan, they also develop serious maintenance problems after only 15 years.
