Marsa Power Station has been the unsung heroine of the Maltese islands. She has been serving our country for more than 50 years and on Sunday, February 15, 2015, at around 11am she took her last breath.

It was a sad affair. The power station that gave so much to Malta and was there every step of the way to produce energy for the smallest consumer to the largest business owner was shut down with not a slither of recognition.

Throughout the years, MPS was demonised and used as a political football. It was blamed for nationwide power cuts, black dust (which we now know she is not the source of), and overall poor air quality in the south of Malta - which even though she does have an effect on, it would be naive to point the finger just at her and forget about traffic congestion.

The burning of fossil fuels will always result in emissions, and Malta’s constant need for an ever increasing supply of electricity together with governments dragging their feet at investing in local generating plants meant that MPS had to be used way past its sell by date. Older equipment means less efficient, more polluting machinery, but desperate times call for desperate measures and MPS needed to stay operational to satisfy Malta’s demands.

As years passed, parts for plant maintenance became more rare to come by and it’s only thanks to the ingeniousness of Enemalta engineers and technicians that MPS was kept operational for so long. If MPS is an unsung heroine, then so are the people who worked there, making sure she ran as smoothly as possible.

I still remember the first time I stepped foot at MPS. I was there for my first interview at Enemalta and as I walked through the street leading to the administration building, shipyard junk on one side and derelict buildings on the other, I asked myself what on earth I was doing there. But after 3 interviews, and a job offer I found myself calling it my place of work. Seeing it everyday I grew to love the monster and also appreciate its beauty, but most of all I learnt the important place it has in Malta’s history and economy.

And yesterday, as I sat there on the opposite side of the wharf, seeing boiler 8 taking the last few breaths as it roared and belched some dark smoke as if to show its disappointment at how she has been treated, I felt a sadness come over me. How could Enemalta not celebrate such a milestone? In my heart I knew it simply wasn’t fair that it was going by unnoticed, like Marsa Power Station never mattered.

The stop of operations at MPS not only mark the closing down of the B station but also signify the end of an era. For more than a century, electricity in Malta was produced in the Harbour area. The first power station was constructed at Crucifix Hill in Floriana overlooking the harbour in 1895 and had a capacity of 350KW. One hundred and twenty years later, Malta has a peak of approximately 427MW - a clear sign of how far our little island has come in the last century.

To me, Marsa Power Station is the Severus Snape of the Harry Potter series. She deserves forgiveness for whatever crimes she may have done and surely deserves all our respect and recognition. Goodbye MPS and thank you!