From Prof E.A. Mallia

Your editorial Assume oil at $200 a barrel (TMIS, 6 July) made a lot of sense. The basis for the calculation of the surcharge given at its introduction never held out any hope of its eventual removal. This has now been tacitly admitted by government, with its proposals for a new tariff structure. The tricky element here is going to be water: the present surcharge is applied to a heavily discounted cost of consumption, at least in the case of the domestic user.

Your urgings to government to bite the bullet are a little late. Renewable sources like onshore wind were already “making sense” with oil at $60 a barrel – remember we use low-sulphur heavy fuel oil and diesel for generation, with an overall efficiency of just under 30 per cent, ie 70 per cent of the energy in the fuel goes up the smoke stack! But government is, in fact, now showing some willingness to bite

bullets. Yet its various players do not seem to have got their act together. On the one side we have the Austin Gatt woodwind ensemble, with their dismal (and incorrect) refrain that wind is more expensive than fossil fuels and their siren song of cheap nuclear electricity coming down the Sicily cable. This orchestra has recently been reported as having to resort to using a mid-1960 Italian turbine to cope with demand. On the other side there is insistence on “cutting-edge” offshore wind technology, significantly more expensive than on-shore wind and taking much longer to set up. A more coherent approach is required.

However, it must be admitted that whatever sense there was in your editorial pales into insignificance beside the wisdom encapsulated in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s piece Tension over the grid. With a truly remarkable display of inside knowledge of the Daphne-centric universe, of great insight into “natural energy obsessive” psychology, of familiarity with “bottom lines” and manufacturing processes, and of appeals to Sunday Telegraph gurus, she reduces your editorial to

tatters.

There are simply too many howlers in the writing to answer all of them, but let’s take her initial claim to being in a minimum-consumption household. Before she convinces anyone on that point, she should answer a few questions: Does she keep her bathroom boilers on all day, or are they on a time switch? What is the energy and water consumption of her “restless” washing machine? Does she cook with gas or electricity? How many fridges and freezers does she have? How many computers? How much and what type of lighting does the house carry?

It may also be worth pointing out that in her tirade against “natural energy obsessives”, DCG shot herself in both feet several times over. Her complaints about Enemalta losses go directly against her gripes about domestic generation, which has the advantage of producing electricity on site, with no losses or theft. Apart from that, we peasants are quite adept at showing that the energy (electrical or otherwise) going into the manufacture of a photo-voltaic panel is re-paid several hundred times over during the panel’s lifetime, just as we are used to factoring in the cost of renewable energy equipment. DCG should desist from trying to teach us to suck eggs, most particularly as she seems to think that in “generating energy by conservative (sic) means”, all one needs to do is invest in a box of matches.

But, best of all, her claim to being in a minimum consumption household makes her the ideal subject for a solar water heater. Her array of devices using hot water should all be connected to the solar water heater. The easiest way to go about this is to connect the output from the solar heater to the (time-switched) “boilers”, and the boilers to the washing machine and dishwasher, as well as to the bath and showers, of course. This would require a twin inlet washing machine (they do exist – I have one) but a single inlet dishwasher will do. Boiler, washer and dishwasher all have their own electric heaters, but if the water at the hot inlet is already at the set temperature, these will not come on. In such a situation, the SWH will produce a lot of hot water when it is needed by DCG’s machines.

Yet more: if DCG were really to go to town and purchase a top-notch SWH, she could actually power a good-sized air-conditioning unit with the surplus hot water produced. Here, supply and demand coincide perfectly! Before any remarks about natural energy obsessives, please remember that fiz-zmien il-brodu fridges were powered by small kerosene burners and today’s hotel room mini-bars use a small electric heater. The operational principle of a solar

powered air conditioner is the same – only the practice has been greatly refined.

E.A. Mallia

ATTARD