Medserv, an oil and gas company, yesterday inaugurated Malta’s first solar farm, which is capable of pushing enough electricity into the national grid to serve the needs of 800 homes.

The 40-year-old company covered its roof tops at Kalafrana – an area of 20,000 square metres – with 8,000 PV panels at a cost of more than €4 million.

The farm will be producing 9,600 daily kilowatt hours of electricity, equivalent to that consumed by 800 homes.

The system will be saving more than 3,100 tonnes of carbon emissions a year, equivalent of 520,000 trees.

Medserv group chairman Anthony Diacono said the entrance of the company into the solar energy market was aimed at diversifying the company’s business and allow it to maximise the return on its assets.

“We have loads of roof space here that is now providing us with a new source of income,” he said, in the presence of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and a number of Cabinet members. Symbolically switching on the farm and connecting it to the national electricity grid, Prime Minister Muscat said the investment fell squarely into the government’s plans to boost the renewable energy sector.

He said the government was confident that with a series of projects in the pipeline, the island would be able to reach stringent EU targets of producing five per cent of its energy demands from renewable sources by 2015.

The government intended to convert the roof tops of a number of factories in its industrial estates to solar and wind farms.

Criticising the previous administration for keeping “unsustainable feed-in tariffs”, Dr Muscat said the government was introducing incentives aimed at stimulating businessmen to enter into such solar energy projects.

Medserv’s core business is the provision of integrated logistical support services in the oil and gas industries.

The group has facilities in Malta, Libya and more recently Cyprus where its base in Larnaca has recently begun operations on a three-year, multi-million contract awarded by Italian energy giant ENI.

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