Nine power faults were reported on Wednesday night in what was a third straight day of thousands being affected by power cuts, as Malta hit a new peak for electricity demand.
The news was shared during a technical briefing given by Enemalta to the media on Thursday.
It is the second technical briefing in as many days, with Energy Minister Miriam Dalli, Enemalta CEO Jonathan Cardona, and Enemalta chairman Ryan Fava facing the media after yet another night of blackouts.
Power cuts were reported across a significant chunk of Malta overnight, with some localities such as Zurrieq and Naxxar reporting a third straight night of outages.
In a briefing on Wednesday, Enemalta said that the current heat wave affecting all of the Mediterranean is the main cause of the power cuts. The Met Office is forecasting temperatures to remain above 40 degrees celsius until at least the middle of next week.
Asked by The Malta Independent during Thursday’s briefing why, if the heat wave is the primary source of concern, most power cuts are being reported in the evening or at night, Cardona said that the temperatures are still remaining high during the night.
Cardona said that a total of nine faults were reported on Wednesday night. One of those affected parts of Birkirkira which was still without electricity throughout Thursday morning and afternoon.
Cardona said that, pending that no more faults happen, electricity will be restored to Birkirkara by around 7 to 8pm on Thursday evening.
That means that Birkirkara will have gone some 27 hours without electricity, as parts have been without power since 5:30pm on Wednesday.
The Enemalta CEO said that a new record peak load of 624 megawatts was recorded on the same day.
He again stressed that the electricity grid is not overloaded, and that the capacity that it can handle is of 830 megawatts.
Cardona added that the company has reinforced its call centre facilities by signing an agreement with servizz.com, which runs the landline 153.
This means that anybody seeking information or wanting to report a power outage can either call Enemalta on the already established phone number, or call on 153.
Dalli meanwhile said that the government is consistently investing in new infrastructure and that besides setting aside €15 million per year for the next six years, the government had also won €70 million for energy projects from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility which has to be used by the end of 2026.
Fava meanwhile denied an assertion made by the PN’s energy spokesperson Mark Anthony Sammut earlier in the day. Sammut said that Enemalta has resorted to using the extreme measure of “load shedding”, thereby resulting in cases where even people who are residing in areas where cable damage has not occurred are being cut off from service so that the system could cope with the demand.
Fava however said that this happens when the energy source of the locality in question is relinked to another nearby distributor because its original distributor would have sustained damage.
On the matter of compensation, Dalli said that the government is evaluating the situation and is not excluding that new forms of compensation are introduced.
Currently, people can apply for compensation from Enemalta on damages sustained to fixed appliances as a result of power cuts.
When asked to specify what form the compensation would take, Dalli said that the government is still in the evaluation process.