The problem that caused last week’s blackout, which affected large parts of the island, was on Malta’s end of the interconnector and not in Sicily, the Times of Malta is informed.

According to senior Enemalta sources, the interconnector, which at the time of the fault was carrying about 190MW of electricity, tripped due to faulty settings at the Magħtab terminal station.

“It is not true that the fault was from Sicily’s side. Energy continued flowing from Ragusa but the preventive system settings at Magħtab were too low for the high voltage carried. This caused the system to shut down automatically, leaving the island without an adequate supply,” the sources said.

Soon after the blackout on August 6, Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi said the widespread power cut “was caused by a fault that occurred on the Italian side”.

Enemalta later said the fault was a result of a severe storm over Sicily “as lightning struck the Sicilian network infrastructure”.

Read more in the Times of Malta.

ENEMALTA INSISTS FAULT CAUSED BY DISTURBANCE IN SICILY NETWORK

In a statement this morning, the company denied that the problem was on Malta's end of the interconnector and insisted that  it was caused by a disturbance in the electricity network in Sicily.

It said that the settings in Malta were perfectly in line with the specifications of the original project design, which had been reviewed by all stakeholders and related international consultants.

Had the settings been faulty, Enemalta would have risked damaging its infrastructure, it said.

Enemalta said that the fact that no electricity supply disruptions were recorded in Sicily had no bearing on the consequences of the earth current disturbance on the Maltese network, since the two electricity systems had different specifications and levels of redundancy based on their respective capacities.