The Load Shedding Committee has announced that the country has not witnessed any load shedding in the last one month and is enjoying power supply in excess of about 6%.
At a press briefing on Wednesday in Accra, the Chairman of the Load shedding Management Committee and CEO of the Gahan Grid Network (GRIDCO) William Amuna, attributed the achievement to the coming on stream of a number of power generation plants.
[contextly_sidebar id=”pIwcFZlMSyNcFv5pSP5md4zXnvePGxjH”]“I’d want to confirm here that close to a month now, we have not called for any load to be shed in the country. Normally, GRIDCO would have to make a study, look at the demand and supply situation and inform the load management committee, then ECG will be called upon to execute the load that will be shed. But I’m happy to say that close to a month now the document GRIDCO sends to the load management committee indicates load shedding; zero for ECG, zero for NEDCO and zero for industry which means that we are not shedding load at all,” he remarked.
Mr. Amuna however said though the nation is enjoying consistent power supply for now, due to challenges in the distribution network, “once in a while you may have your area going off but that does not mean we don’t have enough supply. Presently, we have close to 6% more than what we need.”
He gave the breakdown of some of the power generation plants that have helped to achieve this:
TYCO – 110MW [commissioned and supplying power into the system]
Karpower project – 225 MW
TROJAN project – 25MW [At Tema and running on diesel]
Ongoing projects:
220MW Kpone thermal power project
260MW Sunon Asogli project [Very close to commissioning]
38MW VRA TT2PP expansion project [Close to commissioning]
Ameri project [Start injecting first phase of 100MW on Thursday]
20MW Solar plant [To soon come on stream]
Mr. Amuna assured that “all these will be feeding into the national grid very soon.”
The nation’s projected demand for 2016 is 2,477 MW.
He added that if all generation projects are completed as scheduled, there will be enough generation capacity to meet the projected demand.
Load shedding over or not – The confusion
The then Minister of Power, Dr. Kwabena Donkor resigned on December 31, 2015 for failing to solve load shedding as earlier promised.
Dr. Donkor’s ministry few days before his resignation announced that the load shedding is over.
However, the load shedding committee issued a counter statement saying emphatically that the load shedding was not over.
The committee noted that steps were being taken to permanently end the power crisis.
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana