The Ghana Grid Company, GRIDCo, has blamed the lack of sustained financing to fuel the various dual power generation plants as partly accountable for the intermittent power outages experienced in parts of the country.
According to the power transmission company, Ghana’s ability to resolve the recurring problem should ease the apprehension associated with intermittent power cuts other than those caused by operational faults at the generation plants.
Between Saturday [March 14, 2020] and Tuesday [March 17, 2020], there have been at least three power outages in parts of the country.
Due to the unannounced situation, some consumers had already called for a load shedding time table to enable them plan their lives.
But GRIDCo has offered explanations to these, attributing the initial one on Saturday to a system challenge, while it explained that the power outage experienced on Monday [March 16, 2020] was due to a shortfall in generation by the various power generation plants.
However, speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Wednesday, March 18, 2020, Director of Systems Operations at GRIDCo, Ing. Mark Baah, said there was the need to sustain fuel supply to the plants that run on both liquid and heavy fuel to allow easy switch.
“I think most of the plants have the dual fuel capability that is why Cenpower was online during the period under review. AKSA uses heavy fuel, Kpone thermal which is also a gas fired plant was also online with diesel. So those that had liquid fuel could run. So the issue was the lack of fuel which could also be due to the lack of money,” he explained.
GRIDCo has also explained that ECG’s indebtedness to them to the tune of 800 million cedis is partly responsible for its inability to carry out certain key services for the smooth transmission of power.
The CEO of GRIDCo, Jonathan Amoako Baah, said “We owe banks that we have contracted loans from to build projects which we need to pay…the ECG owes us to the tune of about 800 million cedis.”
Meanwhile, the power transmission company is confident that the ability for power generation plants to meet a peak demand of an estimated 2,900 megawatts of power should make it easy for consumers to enjoy uninterrupted power.
“We are running a little over 5,000 megawatts and we have on record, the highest demand being 2,900 megawatts. Therefore what becomes of the remaining 2,100 megawatts produced? So what is important is that of this installed capacity, what is available to meet demand which is what the consumer pays for,” Ing. Mark Baah added.