Malta experiences first nationwide power cut of the season

Updated at 23:00

First reports about areas and localities affected by the widespread power outage flooded social media shortly after 6pm.

As usual, enemalta’s so-called ‘Live Outage Map‘ showed no useful information before the whole website could not be reached anymore.

A sudden increase in road traffic could be witnessed across the islands as many were forced to change their Sunday evening plans.

Most of the catering establishments, shops and supermarkets were unable to serve their customers and some decided to close early.

Only after 7pm and only in Maltese, enemalta announced on Facebook that its technicians would work to restore the power supply “in the shortest time technically possible”.

At 8pm, the company announced, this time in Maltese and English, that supply had been gradually restored to all affected customers, which some of the affected clients denied in the comments.

Customers also questioned enemalta’s initial claim it had registered a trip at Delimara power station “at 18.20” since the first reports about the outage came in as early as 6.10pm.

Testing led to grid failure

The Malta-Sicily interconnector had been switched off since Sunday morning for maintenance works on the switchgear at the Magħtab terminal station, enemalta said in another statement at 10pm.

It said the works on the switchgear were essential to mitigate a fault that had developed during the past days.

“During testing of the switchgear at Magħtab, a number of distribution feeders tripped at 6.08pm. Subsequently, a number of machines at Delimara tripped. After the situation was stabilized, the tripped distribution feeders were switched back on, and full supply was restored by 7.26pm”, the company explained.

Tests during high demand

The power outage coincided with the live broadcast of the UEFA EURO 2024 Group C game Slovenia-Denmark in Stuttgart, which ended 1-1.

It remains unclear why enemalta decided to test its switchgear at Magħtab during high power demand, while tens of thousands of people were gathering to watch football, rather than later in the night.

The minister politically responsible for Malta and Gozo’s electricity supply, or lack thereof, is Labour’s Miriam Dalli.

Neither Dalli nor Prime Minister Robert Abela, who hours earlier promised a far-reaching change in mentality, have apologised for the inconvenience caused.