Press conference live on NET TV at 1030 (now)

3 Comments Comment

1. Hubert Paul Farrugia says:

   January 16, 2013 at 11:11 am

   Thank you Joseph! Lanqas biss ghadhom telghu fil-gvern u ga b’downgrade… ahseb u ara wara.

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2. Paul Agius says:

   January 16, 2013 at 2:16 pm

   Assume the PL won, issued an “expression of interest” and within a month Company A won to built the plant.

   Now this company must order the plant from the manufacturer who probably isn’t with the workers on forced vacation leave waiting for the approval of the plant by the PL. Probably the manufacturer has other plants in the pipeline, so the PL may have to wait a bit further.

   When the turn comes, the manufacturer has to do the casts or whatever to begin building the plant components.

   This will involve many specializations, so probably expect different manufacturers to be involved (some will be concerned with the turbine, others with the generator, fuel/lube oil pumps, heat exchangers, control circuitry, pipelines, cabling, circuit breakers, protection equipment, etc) and hence again, possibly not all manufacturers are available from day one.

   In other words there needs to be lots of planning and logistics between all those concerned in the manufacturing stage, which will take considerable time (or be penalized later owing to poor planning).

   Finally assume all plant has been manufactured and assembled in place. So now need to at least do a reliability test, say leave the plant running for some 30 full days at full load to see that it delivers what is expected and is reliable.

   But don’t rush because beforehand the plant needs to have spent many days/months testing all its assembled parts separately (say the firing system of turbine, the cooling system, etc) to avoid failing the reliability test and ending with some fault on the 29th day and need to restart the test afresh.

   Maybe the PL would do away with such testing in its hurry to lower the tariffs, and then one day some fault happens and all Malta will finish in the dark (is JM recommending Cyprus in another form?).

   Also no plant can work 24×7 continuously for 10 whole years but will require shutdown from time to time to carry overhauls, servicing or repair faults that occur from time to time.

   So would this mean the PL will order a plant of say 250MW instead of 200MW to safeguard against such eventualities and always have that 50MW as spare? Don’t ask the expert Mizzi because he will tell you it is the responsibility of the private company – as usual it is to incur all expenses … because we are giving it the land at Delimara you know.

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3. Neil Dent says:

   January 16, 2013 at 2:42 pm

   Super One and Labour only bothered about how much the KPMG report cost the tax-payer, while at the same time touting their pie-in-the-sky energy proposal with a price tag of €600 million.

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