The Minister of Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, has revealed some of the causes of the recent power outage (locally known as “damsol”) in some parts of Accra, insisting that the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has not restricted the supply of electricity.
Responding to a question in Parliament, Dr Prempeh argued that certain areas which were previously residential have become commercial hubs, resulting in increased electricity consumption.
“This question was asked over two months ago…No, at the time the question was asked, ECG was not implementing load shedding. Consumers were experiencing power outages due to a variety of factors. This included localised outages due to online and transformer overloads.
“There are parts of the country that have suddenly seen an increase in the number of residents and businesses, parts of East Legon that were purely residential areas have now become business areas, leading to increased electricity consumption.
“This caused disruptions to existing transmission lines and required the upgrade of transformers and transmission lines. Overloaded transmission lines and insufficient average capacity of transformers led to power outages.”
The Manhyia South MP further stated that at the time the survey was issued, CenPower was experiencing an emergency which forced it to shut down completely, resulting in an immediate loss of 40 megawatts of power.
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“This was also a contributing factor and at the same time, maintenance work was also going on at the Amandi power station,” he said.
He further said, “Emergency power outages called for by GRIDCo from time to time are also contributing factors and there are a myriad of unfortunate factors that cause power outages at different times.”
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“The reason ECG said they weren’t doing power outages is because most incidents were unplanned so they couldn’t put out a program in advance saying they were doing power outages.”
The Energy Minister has denied that the Ghana Electricity Company is rationing power supply amid ongoing power outages across the country.#NewsCentral pic.twitter.com/mgzpOlr5l6
— #TV3GH (@tv3_ghana) June 19, 2024