A decade of power failures

The Times of Malta published an article on Saturday quoting an Enemalta spokesperson who blamed power cuts in multiple localities on another summer of record electricity demand.

Soaring temperatures and a resulting spike in power usage are a recurring factor every summer in Malta, but the spokesperson said this latest warm spell put an increased load on the electricity distribution grid, with faults occurring as a result.

The same answer was given last August when the state-owned energy monopoly responded to questions about similar power outages, and we heard it again in August 2020.

In February, Energy Minister Miriam Dalli told the press that Enemalta had earmarked €90 million in infrastructure funding for the next six years, a significant chunk of which would be invested in a new electricity distribution centre in Naxxar and the construction of 250 new substations across Malta.

The fact that the government needs to pump millions of euros into the struggling energy company just to keep it afloat implies much bigger problems within the administration. Enemalta has not published its accounts since 2018, and The Shift reported that its finances have been in the red since 2020, when the company posted a loss of over €30 million.

An analysis of news reports from the last ten years reveals the same seasonal power cuts across multiple localities every year, with no administration taking responsibility for the failure to address them.

The vulnerability of the system to random accidents was exposed when the interconnector between Malta and Sicily was damaged in December 2019 by a ship’s anchor. Power cuts increased significantly over the following year until the damage was repaired.

The Shift has sent questions to Enemalta to find out how many significant power outages have occurred over the past ten years, what improvements have been made to the supply and distribution grid in that same time period, and what the energy supplier is doing to cater for demands that increase each year.