That’s right: Blame the interconnector – it’s foreign after all

There is no known calculation how much money was lost yesterday with the double power cut Malta has suffered. But it must have been huge.

With our known patience and infinite resourcefulness, many of us found some way or other to go round the obstacle, but we must realise that there are industries, especially the online gaming sector, that just cannot have power outages. The wise and provident have their own generators as a permanent back-up. Combined then with a storm such as we had in the past hours, and we get the perfect storm combination – massive traffic on the roads, and added pressure on the electricity grid from those who stayed at home and wanted to stay warm.

Now the interconnector has been blamed for the power outage. This is the second time the interconnector has been blamed without anybody checking to see if Sicily too had been faced with a power outage.

There was never any plan to make the electricity supply dependent exclusively on the interconnector. This was always intended to be a

Editor’s pick

help, a secondary source of energy, not the main or only source. However, on a normal day, the dependence on the interconnector has been quite heavy, given the cheaper prices it offers.

This is not to say that the Sicilian arm of the interconnector did not suffer the damage that has been claimed. One would like to ask whether this section has adequate security, backup and constant maintenance or whether it is left locked and exposed to storms.

However, to blame the interconnector is too glib. After all, we all remember power outages in the years before the interconnector and we all remember the ridiculous excuses that were made such as for instance when the power went off during the Good Friday procession and it was claimed that everybody got up from the sofas and went to make tea so the demand shot up and the network collapsed.

In those days the problem was that the Marsa power station had old boilers that took forever to fire up. The next generation of power station, the BWSC one, had smaller boilers that could be fired up in a shorter time.

We thus ask how come the first power outage (the night one) took so long to be contained. Some technical explanation has been given but we do not know if we are to take that at face value.

The way forward, the government reiterated yesterday, is to keep the interconnector, but the main source of energy should come from the new power station which will work on gas.

Considering the needs of the people and enterprises of Malta, maybe this combination is still not enough. The government and Enemed are hampered by the agreement to take all the energy generated by the gas plant for the next 18 years.

In a different scenario, we could have gone, as we have done on the cable connections to the continent, for a reduplication of the interconnector, maybe hooked to a grid beyond the extremity of Sicily.

It is fundamental to understand that security of electricity provision is absolutely essential. The system must be tailored so as to avoid any repetition of what happened yesterday.