Two years after it was closed down, twice, part of the Marsa power station was resurrected yesterday morning during the power cut emergency.  

Minister Konrad Mizzi confirmed in parliament that an open cycle plant at the old power station was brought back to life when interconnector failures caused widespread power cuts.

The Marsa power station was shut down on February 15, 2015, but a formal shutting down ceremony attended by the prime minister was held in March, 2015.

Sections of the Marsa power station have been on cold stand-by since.

Malta had been receiving 132 megawatts of electricity from the interconnector when it shut down at 1.40am yesterday, triggering a shut down at Delimara power station.

Power was restored to all areas after four hours, but the interconnector failed again at 8.30am. This time the Delimara power station was not shut down meaning that the outage in Malta did not affect the whole country and power was restored to all areas when other energy systems at Delimara were switched on.

"The use of the interconnector is being kept as low as possible pending investigations by Enemalta in the terminal station in Ragusa. Unfortunately, if the problems persist we may have to reuse plants currently on cold stand-by at Marsa power station. In fact, an open cycle plant in Marsa had to be used this morning," Mr Mizzi said.