Heat taking its toll on electricity cables

The high temperature hitting Malta is one of the reasons for the recent spate of power cuts across the island, which have continued over the last week, Enemalta chairman Alexander Tranter has deduced.

The failure of a number of cables, even two metres underground, has been boiled down to the high temperatures, combined with an increased load- which resulted from the heat anyway.

The burden on the network has increased, both in terms of natural conditions and demand, but at no point was the reserve capacity lacking and unable to cope, Mr Tranter insisted.

It was not the first time Malta had faced such high temperatures, but the strong spike in demand - a rapid climb of 100MW in the space of two weeks - meant the cables were heating faster, Mr Tranter said, insisting that the country was never in a situation where there was not enough capacity to meet the demand.

The Enemalta chairman said his intention was to keep the public informed about the "higher than normal amount of power outages" until the situation calmed down.

Asked whether he would be meeting journalists on a regular basis throughout the summer at this rate, he said he did not have power over these particular failures.

"I do no want to say that we have found the solution, or the problem, but since the power cuts have been more frequent than usual, we have been able to build a better picture of the situation."

Interestingly, over the last seven days, no power cuts were registered at the weekend when the peak loads decrease as offices and factories shut. This was another indication that the high demand, coupled with the weather conditions, was causing the faults, Mr Tranter said.

Taking the media through every outage, the damage, duration and cause, Mr Tranter said that some of the cuts were the result of damage to cables by contractors.

While the cuts increased over the last seven days, hitting a wider geographical area, fewer consumers were affected as they occurred in less inhabited areas, the chairman said.

Mr Tranter said that in Sicily massive power cuts were being registered due to overheated cables and a spike in energy consumption.

Meanwhile, Enemalta has invested in extra resources, increasing the number of engineers on call, while its distribution control room was being manned 24 hours a day and the number of employees on standby in case of multiple faults has been doubled.