Mizzi blames lack of spare capacity for power cuts

The recent repeated power cuts underlined the way how power station capacity was increasingly not meeting demand, Labour MP Joe Mizzi told Parliament yesterday.

Malta was suffering from bad planning in power generation which had left the power stations with a small capacity margin which disappeared whenever there was a fault.

On June 18 a fault had developed at Delimara power station and available generating capacity dropped to 353 MW. Yet demand peaked at 365MW on June 19 and 20 climbing to 376MW on June 21 and 377MW on June 22. On June 24 generating capacity was restored to 473 MW.

Mr Mizzi said that according to international standards Malta should have space capacity of 120MW yet, at best, the margin was only of 93MW, and one could anticipate demand rising with the new hospital and SmartCity.

It seemed a decision had finally been taken to install a new 120MW plant but this would not be enough to meet the expected growth in demand.

Mr Mizzi was speaking during the debate on a Bill to amend the Malta Resources Authority Act, opening the way for the liberalisation of the importation and distribution of fuels.

Mr Mizzi said liberalisation of this sector had fallen back for political reasons.

A couple of companies, which backed the Nationalist Party were now preparing to import fuel as authorised providers utilising Enemalta's infrastructure. This was being done in the name of fair competition. Had the government really wanted fairness it would have done what Labour did with Maltacom, when it gave all the people the right to invest in the country's resources.

Fair competition as defined by the government meant that market forces should influence the cost of fuel. In Malta, however, the people were also paying for Enemalta's inefficiencies.

The Malta Resources Authority had failed its duty of protecting the people from unreasonable prices, including the high surcharge, and the people and industry were paying the price because of inefficiency and a lack of hedging agreements.

The authority had also delayed the drawing up of an effective energy policy. As a result, Malta only paid lip service on the use of renewable energy sources. Why wasn't the adoption of solar water heaters made compulsory on new buildings?

It was also a result of the authority's failing that the power stations now lacked enough spare capacity.

The debate was concluded by Resources Minister Ninu Zammit, who said the authority was slowly finding its feet. The energy policy document had been drawn up and it was now being fine-tuned.

Mr Zammit said no government had raised generating capacity as steeply as the present government, which built a power station, several distribution centres and a large number of substations. As a result, generation was increased and distribution losses were reduced.

Mr Zammit said the government was committed to see the introduction of more sources of renewable energy, but one had to be realistic. Financial incentives were being given for the installation of solar water heaters and the purchase of fuel efficient appliances.

Photovoltaics, unfortunately, were still too expensive and not very efficient. The installation of on land wind farms would mar the environment and take up too much space. They could possibly be set up offshore although the sea around Malta was very deep.

Referring again to power station capacity, Mr Zammit said the Marsa power station had served its time and it has not been closed for good because there were two new boilers with the old turbines. What had to be done was to replace the equipment which had to be removed. It was inevitable, however, that some faults developed.