[WATCH] Enemalta has contingency plan for heatwave

Enemalta has a short-term contingency plan to ensure this week's heatwave causes as little disruptions as possible to the electricity supply, the Energy Minister said on Tuesday.

Miriam Dalli said Enemalta had emergency procedures to avoid long power cuts at times like this.

“We are making sure that more resources are deployed, with continued monitoring particularly at those vulnerable points, so that wherever we have a power cut it’s addressed as soon as possible.”

This would help decrease the length of the power cut, she added.

Last week, Enemalta apologised for the power cuts that affected several localities, the cause of which were faults in the distribution system.

Enemalta CEO Jason Vella said the higher demand for electricity as a result of heatwaves in the past couple of weeks exposed weaknesses in the distribution network that buckled under the stress.

Two cable faults even left Marsaskala residents without electricity for almost 20 hours.

Vella explained that in the case of Mosta and Marsaskala, multiple faults on the same network developed which limited the company’s ability to restore electricity as quickly as possible by rerouting supply.