Call for expressions of interest on Sikka l-Bajda wind farm

In a press conference, Resources and Rural Affairs Minister George Pullicino outlined the results obtained between November 2009 and October 2010 from a land-based wind mast located at l-Aħrax, in Mellieħa.

The study, Pullicino said, found that the average long-term wind speed projection at Sikka l-Bajda fell within the margin of viability laid down in the 2009 Mott MacDonald report – estimated by government at between 6.5 and 7.5 metres per second at a height of 70 metres.

The Mott MacDonald report said that the lowest average wind speed possible for the wind farm to retain technical viability is 6 m/s.

Calculating the long term average wind speeds calculated at 10m ranged between “5.75 m/s and 6.00 m/s,” the report concluded that wind speeds at Sikka l-Bajda are low compared to those experienced at offshore wind farms in Northern Europe, and the cost of building and operating the farm were too high for an offshore wind farm.

“Therefore a sizeable tariff would be necessary to make a wind farm in this region financially viable,” the report stated. As an offshore farm, the Sikka l-Bajda option would require either 17 giant 5-megawatt turbines with 126-metre diameter rotors; or 29 smaller 3-megawatt turbines.

Pullicino said the calculation was based on figures gathered through a land-based wind mast, and that the forecast is a “conservative” one as wind speeds are likely to increase as one moves further out to sea.

Pullicino also said that the wind mast results showed that a wind farm at Sikka l-Bajda would have generated around 200 gigawatts per hour (GW/h) of electricity which is equivalent to 10.2 per cent of the total electricity supplied by Enemalta Corporation during the same period.

This, he said, is equal to the electricity demand of 40,000 households and 3.24 per cent of the 2020 10% remunerable energy target.

During the press conference, Pullicino maintained that the call for expression did not mean the government was ignoring ongoing environmental studies, but that the government is seeking to look into the financing side of the project through the expressions of interest it hopes to receive from the private sector.

He added that the findings of the environmental studies will be concluded and made public by the end of the year. “It is the private sector that should pay and sell the energy,” Pullicino said, adding that any such private operator would be selling that energy directly to consumers and would be regulated by the Malta Resources Authority in terms of prices.

Pullicino was however reticent to say whether the government would take up the project itself should no private investor come forward. He maintained that the government’s ‘price tag’ of €3 million remains unchanged. “We will consider that option if and when we come to it.”

Pullicino played up the importance of the recently-approved interconnector linking Malta with the European energy grid (through Sicily) in this regard. He maintained that due to stability issues, it would have been impossible to connect a wind farm to Malta’s grid. “The interconnector, and the European grid it opens up to us, gives us that stability.”

Speaking of Malta’s 10% alternative energy target, Pullicino emphasised how solar energy was currently expensive, given the technology currently available. “One unit of solar energy is worth three units of wind energy,” he said.

Citing solar and wind as two sources of renewable energy that the government aims to develop by 2020 to meet the EU’s targets, Pullicino said that waste represents the third source. “We are literally throwing away coal,” he said, referring to the dumping of waste and how it is forecasted that as much as 3.25 per cent of Malta’s 10 per cent target could be created from this source.

Director of the Universityof Malta’s Institute for Sustainable Energy Tonio Sant also spoke of developments in wind turbine technology (namely, the gearbox and the wind blades) that would mean far quieter turbines.

Sant added that the results of a similar year-long study will be concluded in the coming months and will yield data of wind farm viability from a mast located in Baħrija.