Enemalta explains Sliema power outage

A five-hour long power outage in Sliema on Monday was caused by a cable fault close to the old Empire Stadium, in Gzira, affecting a large number of substations that had to be switched onto other circuits, Enemalta said.

Although the request to start excavation works to identify the fault and restore the electricity was made on Monday, the Sliema local council only issued permission on Tuesday, it said.

"The corporation can only start works when and if the appropriate authority allows it to - in this case the Sliema local council," an Enemalta spokesman explained.

Enemalta engineers, therefore, had to divert electricity from another route in order to rectify the outage, which occurred at 5.40 p.m. and lasted until 11 p.m.

"The cable fault affected a large number of substations that had to be switched onto other circuits. In fact, several switching operations were required to balance the loads and to prevent overloading of the other circuits," the spokesman explained.

The switching operations are carried out in sequence and manually at each of the affected substations, requiring time, the corporation said.

The rectification of the fault was carried out on Tuesday; the cable has been repaired, and the system switched to normal, it said.