First major nationwide power cut on Sunday

Malta and Gozo experienced their first major power cut on Sunday when almost the whole islands were without electricity for around30m to 2 hours at max.

Power went out at around 610 PM in several localities including Mellieha, St Paul's Bay, San Gwann, Msida, Zabbar, Marsaskala, Birzebbugia, Attard, Mosta and Naxxar but several others reported outages. Gozitan localities of Sannat, Xaghra and Xewkija were mostly affected.

In a post on Facebook, Enemalta said that the Malta-Sicily Interconnector was switched off on Sunday morning for maintenance works on the switchgear at the Magħtab terminal station. The switchgear works are 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. 

Interconnector works shall continue and will be completed on Monday. During this period, supply shall be sourced from Delimara Power Station, which has sufficient generating capacity to meet demand, Enemalta concluded.