Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1504229
YOU can say what you like about Malta's only national en- ergy provider, but one thing's for sure. Whoever writes their press releases is certainly 'con- sistent', about the true causes of power-cuts in Malta. To put that another way: I've been writing in local newspa- pers ever since around October 1995... and as you can imagine, I have experienced (and writ- ten about) many, MANY pow- er outages, in the space of that time. There was even a phase in my career, when 'storifying press releases' was a major part of my daily job. And after each and every single black- out, Enemalta's press releas- es would land directly on my desk; whereupon I would sim- ply turn all the most important paragraphs into 'quotes'; insert all the missing 'he said/she said, blah-blah-blah'; then toss the finished product into the 'Subbed/To Print' folder, along with all the rest of the jun... I mean, 'important fillers, for the news pages'. So when I read Enemalta's press release this week, it al- most took me right back to the long, hot summer of 2014: when – as some of you might remember – the entire island experienced an 'unprecedent- ed' (at the time) six-hour pow- er-cut on August 12, in tem- peratures that were almost as hot as today's. Obviously, I can't remember the exact wording, all these years later. But I do recall that the substance of that 2014 En- emalta statement, was IDEN- TICAL to the one it released last Thursday (after an equally unprecedented spate of black- outs, that left great swathes of the country without electricity for anywhere up to 30 hours... in temperatures of 41, 42+ de- grees centigrade.) Then as now, we were told that the outages were not caused by any 'insufficiency', on the part of Malta's ener- gy-generation capacity (i.e., a combination of the Electrogas power station in Delimara, and the Interconnector), to meet the increased demand of sum- mer heatwaves. Oh, no: the problem – as En- emalta has consistently told us, over the past decade at least - lies with the 'distribution net- work' instead. Now: to be fair, the 'prob- lem' was not exactly the same in 2014, as it is today. Back then, it was "a damaged cable which caused an explosion at the electricity distribution cen- tre, and automatic shutdown of both power stations". Last Thursday, Enemalta CEO Jon- athan Cardona clearly said that "the faults are not due to over- loads. [...] The national system is capable of providing 830MW [i.e., far more than the current record of '624MW during peak hours'] and we can assure you that overloading is not an is- sue". The real issue, he explained, is that "the soaring tempera- tures have caused roads to heat up, and this heat is bringing out certain latent defects in underground cables." He even added that: "The cables might have been laid badly. In such a case, nothing would happen at first, but the issue will develop over time." Well, this brings me to the first of many things, that have always perplexed me about En- emalta's consistent reactions to nationwide blackouts. On both those occasions – 2014 and 2023; and in many others that I remember less clearly – Enemalta's claims were always met with a sponta- neous chorus of derision, scep- ticism, and downright disbelief. To quote just one comment (only slightly edited) from our own website this week: "Go pull the other one! Come on, who do you think you're fool- ing? It's glaringly obvious that the power cuts are due to the unsustainable demand of elec- tricity by households, high rise towers and the uglified monster buildings sprouting all over the island!!! Why do these cable faults happen during peak load times?" Etc., etc. I, too, must admit that I have always been one of those sceptics myself. Just like 'Old King Cole', above, I find it suspicious that these occur- rences always coincide with 'sweltering summer heat'; and the simultaneous use of fans, air-conditioners, ice-machines, and God-knows-what-else... as mass-tourism swells an already booming 520,000+ population, to around two million at any one time. Surely, that must have SOME- THING to do with the fact that summer blackouts have now become so frequent, that you can almost literally predict them just by looking at a ba- rometer? The more I think about it to- day, however... the more I be- gin to realise that something, somewhere doesn't quite 'add up'. Let's start with the scepti- cism regarding Enemalta's core claims. And let's also assume – purely for the sake of argu- ment (in other words: 'Dear Enemalta, please don't sue; it's just an entirely hypothetical suggestion, etc., etc.') – that the State-owned energy cor- poration really IS lying, about the true causes of power-cuts in Malta. The first question that auto- matic arises, under those cir- cumstances, is... why would Enemalta tell us THAT lie, in particular; and not the other one? Why would Enemalta keep insisting, over and over again, that the real reason for black- outs has nothing whatsoever to do with 'overloads', or 'pow- er-surges'... but everything to do with 'faults in the (entirely Enemalta-owned, as far as I am aware) energy distribution net- work'? Reason I ask, is that... last I looked, Enemalta was not re- sponsible for the actual pow- er-generation capabilities of the Maltese State. To the best of my knowledge, it doesn't 'own' the Delimara power sta- tion – on the contrary, it buys its energy from Electrogas; and it subsequently distributes that maltatoday | SUNDAY • 23 JULY 2023 10 OPINION Enemalta has just admitted responsibility for the blackouts. Why does no one believe them? Raphael Vassallo