The new BWSC power station was proving to be hugely problematic, with 164 faults having caused stoppages of some its engines, Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi told parliament this morning.

The minister said that while this new plant was more efficient than the Marsa power station or Delimara Phase I, savings were still not enough to stop Enemalta from making losses.

The BWSC plant, he said, was a complicated prototype design and its maintenance was problematic to the extent that it was very rare to have all eight engines working. Most of the time two of the engines were switched off for maintenance and two were offline because of faults.

It was a disgrace, he said, that between January and September there had been hundreds of faults, of which 164 had caused a shut down of engines, the minister said.

He went on to quickly read a list of faults, including leakages in several parts of the engines and problems in the boilers, conveyor belts, high pressure pipe alignments and jamming of work stations.