Honeycomb Services Ltd has been identified as the third-party company exclusively supplying Enemalta with diesel-powered generators to ensure households are not left without electricity for long during power outages.

Enemalta executive chair Ray Fava told Times of Malta the company was selected through a negotiated procedure. The arrangement costs the corporation up to €4,700 a day “only if all 10 generators are used simultaneously for 24 hours straight”.

Honeycomb was originally incorporated in 1995 and is registered on a Kalkara address in the name of Jesmond Bondin, who has connections with Nexos and the Malta Fairs and Conventions Centre.

“We issued a number of negotiated procedures but only one company was capable of providing the service,” Fava stated. He dismissed claims that the lease of the generators was costing Enemalta more than €10,000 an hour. “It is not true. In the worst-case scenario, when all 10 generators are used simultaneously it would cost us between €4,000 and €4,700.”

We issued a number of negotiated procedures but only one company was capable of providing the service- Enemalta executive chairman Ray Fava

According to Fava, this figure includes the cost of keeping the generators on standby while idle, transporting them to the destination needed, and putting them into service by connecting them to the substations.

During the recent power cuts, which left up to 5,000 households without electricity, Enemalta connected generators to substations to provide power to homes.  

“Cable faults can take up to 16 hours to locate and repair. We could not leave our clients in the dark for so long. Generators were our only alternative supply of power to those households that could not be reached via an alternative route underground cable.”

Asked why power cuts persisted even where Enemalta installed generators, he replied: “The largest generators we have at our disposal are 1.2 MVA units. It is possible that substations tripped because the load was greater than they could handle.”