One-fifth of Malta in the dark

There was a mad scramble for candles and paraffin lamps across Maltese households yesterday afternoon, as a wide scale power cut plunged up to one-fifth of Malta and Gozo into semi-darkness.

Readers of The Times reported electricity cuts in Naxxar, Marsa, Luqa, Sliema, Mosta, Tal-Qroqq, Attard, Paola, Buġibba, Xemxija, San Ġwann, Mtarfa, San Gwann, Swatar, Siggiewi, Mellieħa and all of Gozo. Almost 80,000 people – around 20 per cent of Malta’s population – live in these localities.

Enemalta blamed the outage on a switchboard fault at its Marsa South distribution centre at 3.50 p.m. yesterday. The fault led to Marsa, Luqa and parts of Paola losing power.

When engineers began the re-switching process, the distribution centre suffered yet another fault, this one with greater repercussions.

As a result of the second fault, boiler 8 and a gas turbine at Marsa power station tripped. Enemalta’s Mosta distribution centre, which supplies power to much of northern Malta, also lost power.

Marsa power station is running on bought time, with three of its four plants having exceeded the 20,000-hour lifetime limit established under EU legislation.

Two of the four plants are due to be decommissioned next May, once the new Delimara power station is operational, with the remaining two plants are due to be shut down once an interconnector between Malta and Sicily is completed.

The interconnector will allow Malta to purchase electricity from the European mainland, but last weekend the Prime Minister announced that the project has been delayed. It is now likely to be completed by the end of 2013.

Laptop and smart phone users across the Maltese Islands were undeterred by yesterday’s power outage. Within minutes, comments were pouring into timesofmalta.com, with plenty of local Facebook users also discussing the blackout.