Shorepower outage attributed to ‘testing’

Media reported that the power on MSC World Europa, which was turned on for the first time last month to much acclaim, had gone out for one minute before back-up generators were fired up to keep the lights on for 30 minutes until shorepower could be restored.

A message on Facebook from one of the passengers on the vessel said the ship had announced the outage happened because of the new shorepower system, and that people had been stuck in lifts on the 22-deck vessel.

However Transport Malta has since claimed the outage was part of a standard testing procedure, on a fire-fighting system, and that as the vessel was due to be disconnected imminently, the power was not reconnected after the test.

“The ship’s standby generator activated immediately, providing electricity to the ship again in less than a minute,” Transport Malta said.

Thousands of passengers were on-board the World Europa, with more than 2,000 crew as it was at berth at the Grand Harbour.

Valletta is one of around 20 European ports given a grant to install shorepower under the EU’s ‘Connecting Europe Facility’.

This is itself part of the EU’s trans-European Network Policy (TEN-T), which is being planned to connect networks across the bloc.