Drop in gas supply to blame for current power outages – GRIDCo
By: Novire Kuuyizie Francis
The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) has confirmed that the current power outages in some parts of the country are due to its inability to supply the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) with the power needed to supply consumers.
Following days of fluctuating power supply to some parts of the country with stakeholders raising concerns and warning that there could be another season of DUMSOR looming, the Ghana Grid Company has come out to clarify that this challenge is simply because there is no gas to power its thermal plants.
Commenting on the issue, the corporate communications manager of GRIDCo, Dzifa Bampo stated that GRIDCo, as a transmission entity and as the entity that manages the national grid is aware of some commercial challenges with supply in reference to gas.
These challenges include agreements, negotiations and payments that need to be made with gas suppliers and once there is a drop in supply as a result of these fulfillments, it affects the generating capacity and ultimately, GRIDCo’s transmission capacity.
“For us, we are unable to provide the full quantum of power supply ECG would need for demand in-country and that is just because there are these commercial issues related to the gas-supplying entities and the government, those need to be addressed, if we get the full quantum of the gas supply that we normally do, then we can addressed transmission issues”, she stated.
Former deputy power minister and Energy Committee member in parliament, John Jinapor highlighted that GRIDCo has been shedding load for the past one week and projections show that it could get worse in the coming weeks because of the increase in consumption and the government’s inability to support power sector players to procure light crude oil due to the current economic challenges.
“As we speak, one of the causes is that there is a shortage of light crude oil, so even when the plants are available, because of inadequate fuel, they are unable to generate enough power to meet domestic needs, two is that Asogli has also decided to shut down its plant, more than five hundred megawatts, that creates a huge shortfall and the combined effect of these two unfortunate situations has led to a significant reduction in the supply of power, culminating in what we call dumsor or load shedding which has been going on for about a week now”, he offered.
For a solution, he proposed that the president intervenes by getting Asogli Power Thermal Station (which has shut down operations due to financial difficulties) to resume operations and secondly, government should find some money to procure light crude oil to service the remaining power producers. He concluded that the next government must ensure that Ghana achieves the gas-to-power era if the intermittent power cuts and load shedding issues are to be eradicated
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