The government can keep the lights on should the offshore tanker supplying the Electrogas power station need to be disconnected in a prolonged storm, energy minister Miriam Dalli has assured the country.

Malta’s total energy demand hovers between 400 and 550 megawatts at any point in time but the country can supply 700, Dalli said on Thursday.

Works are ongoing on the second interconnector and renewables including offshore- Energy mnister Miriam Dalli

The Electrogas plant produces around 200 megawatts, she added. The plant is one of Malta’s two main energy supplies, the interconnector to Sicily being the other.

Answering questions from Times of Malta, Dalli said: “When an energy source is not functioning, the country can still keep going.” This is known as Enemalta’s ‘N minus 1’ policy.

Energy Minister Miriam Dalli. Photo: Jonathan Borg

The Electrogas LNG power station in Delimara relies on a floating storage unit that stores LNG in the waters beside the plant.

In bad weather, the tanker is pulled from its jetty for safety reasons and winched a few metres away.

The gale winds of Storm Helios last week forced the tanker to take its position in the storm mooring system, meaning the Electrogas power station had to grind to a halt.

Malta looking to diversify energy

Dalli again insisted that the government was looking to further diversify its energy supply. The government was working on a gas pipeline between Malta and the rest of the EU, she said.

“Works are ongoing on the second interconnector and renewables including offshore.”

The Sicily-Malta interconnector, the other major energy source, “tripped” last Friday leaving the island without power for an hour and a half.  Dalli said that a fault on the Sicilian side of the interconnector was the cause.

However, PN energy spokesperson Mark Anthony Sammut said the interconnector was overloaded when the offshore tank was disconnected.

He tabled a document in parliament “which shows interconnector use hour by hour during the days of bad weather”.

The document sourced data from Italy’s transmission operator, which publishes real-time data about energy use and its sources. “The interconnector, designed for 200/225 megawatts, was being overloaded,” Sammut said in parliament on Tuesday. 

“In spite of all their boasting, they [the Labour government] only gave us energy when it was sunny,”   he added, referring to the Electrogas power station.

Government taking 'irresponsible risk'

However, Dalli denied that the interconnector was ever overloaded.

“It can take a load of up to 350MW for a short period of around an hour if the temperature is kept under control,” she said.

“This is insane,” Sammut said in a Facebook reaction to Dalli’s comments.

He said that to take the risk of that load causing damage to the interconnector, when the government knew that without it Malta switches off, was very irresponsible.