Enemalta is forking out more than €10,000 an hour to lease large generators to shore up its ongoing energy crisis, a result of mismanagement and lack of investment, The Shift can reveal.
Chairman Ryan Fava admitted during the weekend that Enemalta is using industrial generators to try to mitigate hours of blackouts across the country. However, engineers at the state company told The Shift that the situation is much worse than what the chairman described.
They said that for the second year in a row, Enemalta is relying on some 50 generators, mostly leased from Nexos Lighting to save the situation.
“All of Nexos’s generators, which are usually used for filming locations, are currently at Enemalta’s disposal,” the engineers said.
The capacity of the hired generators varies from some 300 KVa to as much as 4 Megawatts.
Other industrial generators were hired from Bonnici Brothers, a company that has been winning massive tenders and direct orders since Abela became Prime Minister in 2020.
Enemalta engineers told The Shift that these generators are costing the company at least €10,000 an hour when used at one go.
Chairman Ryan Fava and Energy Minister Miriam Dalli.
“It depends on the size of the generator. However, on average, the company is forking out some €600 an hour for each generator. We calculate some €10,000 an hour in very conservative terms,” they added.
This is not the first time that Enemalta has had to rely on Nexos and other private suppliers to mitigate the massive faults in its distribution system caused by a lack of investment in the past years and the uncontrolled rise in the population.
Last year, on the direct orders of Energy Minister Miriam Dalli, Enemalta had to lease Nexos’s generators by direct order to ensure that a few streets in the minister’s constituency – Zurrieq – could be lit up for the village feast.
Dalli was under pressure by her constituents celebrating the Tal-Karmnu feast in pitch darkness and had to find a quick solution to avoid further embarrassment. At the time, since the filming of the Gladiator sequel was on hold due to a Hollywood strike, the generators of Nexos were quickly transferred to Zurrieq for Dalli to save face.
Chairman Ryan Fava and Minister Dalli did not answer questions when asked to give details on the number of generators Enemalta was renting and at what cost.
Does anyone remeber who Nexos is? Yep, Silvio Scerri – Manuel Mallia’s once right hand man, ex Chairman of Lands Dept, ex CEO Transport Malta, ex CEO ARMS Ltd, current chairman Xjenza Malta. He had resigned from director of Nexos, but I’m sure he still has a finger in the pie.
He has the pie in his mouth . Second hand generators probably scrap value .
You are forgettng the discreet shareholding of keith schembri
There you are. My recent suggestion to place govt owned gens in front of the minister’s residence and that private ones are a source of income, proved me correct. Make money while the moon shines.
According to Enemalta the hire of a generator is about €600 an hour. At the moment there are 14 generators in use. This works out at € 8,400 per hour.. Multiplied by an average of 10 hours the sum shootsc up to €84,000. Quite a heavy cost for lack of investment along the years.
Ifhem. L sponsorships minn xi mkien iridu jigu. Mhux vera, jew?
Mhux ovvja li ghandna krizi. Is-Sur Ryan Fava izjed mohhu fil-port u l-haddiema tax-xatt ghax dak ix-xoghol full time tieghu. L-Enemalta jiehu 150,000 Ewro biex rari tarah l-hawn.
And who is paying for the generators? We the taxes paying public. Cost of electricity indirectly increased to the public
All this while the Interconnector cable protection has been increased from 200 Mw to 225 Mw by stealth. This is very serious and whoever signed the order for this will be responsible for serious long term damage to the cable due to a 20% increase in the heat that has to be dissipated by the cable.The cable temperature increase due to the current increase will make the the cable hotter and will be degraded to the point that it blows up at the hot points , especially joints and repaired places.
Why do we keep paying for this incompetent, criminal government?
Just thinking. AND reading that the new portable, e37 million temporary power station is at the freeport. I would really like someone to correct me if I am wrong. I believe that miriam dalli had stated that we are generating enough power and the real problem was distribution. May I ask why then are we importing and renting generators and more generation equipment? We certainly do nor need more electrcity generation. Or am I an “iblah”?;