Enemalta’s new €15.4 million Mosta Distribution Centre was yesterday officially inaugurated by Infrastructure Minister Austin Gatt who said that the new facility, part of a €65 million plan, will allow the energy corporation to better manage technical losses.
Dr Gatt was shown around the new facility, opposite the old one in Triq Durumblat, by Enemalta chairman Alex Tranter. During the tour, it was explained that the centre feeds electricity to the localities of Mosta, Naxxar, St Paul’s Bay, Mgarr, Mellieha and Gozo.
The first phase of the project was commissioned in 2003 and involved a 90 MVA link to the Marsa South station which is directly linked to the Delimara power plant.
The second phase involved the linkage of Mosta’s centre to Marsa South through two 132 KV circuits through an underground tunnel that has led to less overhead cabling and the removal of redundant power lines linking the two stations.
The new Mosta Centre is equipped with modern control systems that allow remote monitoring. The centre was put together by Enemalta employees under supervision of the supplier for guarantee purposes.
Dr Gatt said Enemalta’s investment will lead to a strengthening of electrical energy capacity which will also help in avoiding situations of the past where supply could not match demand and therefore resulted in a power cut.
He said the demand for electricity was increasing and therefore, Enemalta was investing to increase its energy generation capacity. Dr Gatt also pointed out that the government was to lay an interconnectivity cable between Malta and Sicily which will cost another e200 million.
In addition, a new turbine will be installed at the Delimara plant to compensate for the targeted closure of Marsa by 2015. Engineer Tranter explained that the old Mosta Centre was obsolete and had been in action for about 40 years. “This new plant will help us reduce technical losses,” he said.
Dr Gatt and Ing. Tranter were asked for the latest technical loss levels which were placed at 6 per cent. To put this into context, Cyprus (a similar island grid) had a loss of 5 per cent. “Going below five per cent does not make commercial sense as you have to spend more than you would save to achieve the result,” said Dr Gatt.
The minister and the chairman said that the remaining seven per cent of losses were made up of electricity theft and old meters that are still running. It must be pointed out, however, that for the past year or so, the government and Enemalta had taken 13 per cent to be the percentage of technical loss. Yesterday’s announcement, it seems, seems to have changed the ball game with what the minister termed to be “six per cent in real technical loss” and “the remainder made up of other losses”.
This newspaper also asked how come demand was still expected to increase when the new tariffs were supposedly encouraging people to consume less. “The curve has planed a little bit, but the reality is that demand will always increase in a country where economic growth is being registered. Industry and services result in more demand for power,” he said. The minister also said that SmartCity will have a demand of 20 MW in power and Enemalta will be able to produce this amount without any problems.