Enemalta has said in a statement that, first indications for this morning’s power outage across the islands established damage at sea in the interconnector cable between Malta and Sicily at around 7.30am.

“It emerged that two of the three conductors and all fibre optic lines were damaged, around 30 kilometres away from Sicily in international waters,” Enemalta said that the damage incurred requires several weeks to be repaired.

The corporation went on to say that during this period Enemalta will have limited dispatch flexibility which could result in unplanned interruptions to the electricity supply in circumstances that it will have no control over.

At the time of the incident, Enemalta said that the interconnector was at full load due to limitations in the capacity of the generating plants in Delimara.

The power supply started being restored at around 10:04am with the use of emergency turbines, with priority given to particular strategic locations. the situation was back to normal across the island at around 1.10pm. Power started to be restored in Gozo from about 11:20am.

Enemalta has opened a technical investigation to establish all the facts which led to this situation and apologised for any inconvenience caused.

Permalink: Repairs to damaged conductors will take weeks, more power cuts possible