A temporary power station to help prevent more power cuts is set to be fully operational by mid-August, according to Enemalta’s executive chair.

Ryan Fava said the €37 million diesel-run 60-megawatt plant is in transit but should arrive in Malta towards the end of this month.

Once in Malta, it will take two to three weeks before it is operational, he said, when asked for a later clarification.

Several localities have experienced sporadic power cuts throughout the last two weeks as temperatures rise to the mid and high 30ºC temperatures. The interruptions come a year since most of Malta and Gozo sustained repeated power cuts in the midst of a heatwave, sparking a crisis.

Fava was speaking on Tuesday morning before more power cuts were reported.

Enemalta obtained the plant as part of a wider effort to prevent last year’s situation from repeating.

UNEC Ltd, the Bonnici Bros-owned firm that won the €37 million contract to provide the temporary power station, was contractually bound to start operating it this month. 

The tender document states that any delays are to penalised through an equal reduction in the facility's 27-month operating term. The document does not mention any provisions for financial compensation for delays.

In a letter asking the Environmental Resource Authority to waive an environmental impact assessment for installing the plant, Fava said a temporary power station was needed “to avoid a repeat of the crisis experienced last summer”.

The letter said Enemalta is anticipating that the demand for energy in summer 2024 will rise even higher than last year’s records and had said that, unless the project is commissioned before the summer of 2024, it will not be able to guarantee the security of electricity supply.

'I wish the generator arrived today'

“I wish the generator arrived today but the fact is they are in high demand across the Mediterranean. Many generators have also been sent to Ukraine to help maintain power there. We were lucky to even source a plant,” Fava told Times of Malta.

If all the country’s power generation sources are operating, they can collectively produce 950 megawatts, enough to comfortably meet Malta’s energy needs, Fava said.

At the current rate of energy use, enough power can be provided for everyone in the country, even if one of the power sources fails, Fava said.

Malta’s power generation sources include the Electrogas power station, the BWSC power station, solar panels, the interconnector and an emergency plant.

The new temporary plant will join that network until the second interconnector between Malta and Sicily is operational towards the end of 2026 or the beginning of 2027, he said.

Longer term, the government is also looking to have offshore wind power and on-sea floating solar power.

Since July, Enemalta has also laid down 82 km of new cables in the areas most affected by last year’s power cuts, like Mosta, Naxxar, Għargħur and Żurrieq.

New connections between different substations in the area have also been made in a system known as “webbing”, he said. This enhances the reliability of the power grid and reduces downtime during outages.

“God forbid we have problems in the areas we reinforced,” Fava said when asked about the chances of having long power cuts in those localities again.

I cannot guarantee there won’t be problems in other areas- Enemalta's executive chair Ryan Fava

But new cables still need to be passed through other parts of Malta, Fava said, and trenching works to install new cables in areas like St Paul’s Bay, Sliema and Gżira will begin soon.

“I cannot guarantee there won’t be problems in other areas,” he said.

Fava said that Naxxar also needs a new distribution centre to take the pressure off the Mosta centre.

Energy plants feed power to distribution centres, from where electricity is then fed to substations, which in turn supply homes and buildings with energy.

Should there be failures this year, Fava said that Enemalta is prepared with a “Plan B”.

“That plan includes transporting large generators directly to substations and feeding electricity to households through portable generators,” he said.

An auditor general’s report on last summer’s power cuts said that Enemalta under-invested in the electricity grid.

Asked about this, Fava attributed the issue to the inability to find contractors who were both capable and willing to do the necessary work.

“Of course, you can budget for certain things but then you need to find the resources to do that kind of work and it could be that it wasn’t that easy to find the contractors to do certain works,” said Fava, who took over as executive chair last October.