Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Ghana Industries, Seth Twum Akwaboah, has called on GRIDCO to hasten their system upgrade. According to him, this is to prevent any negative effect on operations of industries.
Commending the efforts made by GRIDCO, for the upgrade timelines, Mr. Akwaboah urged the company to stick to its schedule. He, however, cautioned the company to do everything possible to rectify the technical difficulties.
“We all experienced the recent power cut. But our understanding of it as it has been explained by GRIDCo [was] that it was a technical problem. And once you are working with machines, you will occasionally have this situation. So, for us, we are not seeing it as a dumsor situation, we see it as a technical situation or hitch. And that is understandable, as long as we are able to quickly rectify it. But we only advise that at all times, we must be very vigilant and make sure that we do everything possible to prevent such technical hitches because in the industry the slightest hitch can affect you big time.
“You could have some of the machines taking several hours to heat up before it becomes ready for production. So, if all the energy you have stored before production starts [and] suddenly goes off and you lose it, then that becomes a problem. But I think that GRIDCO has done well by announcing in advance. So, once the notice is given in advance, then I don’t think there should be too much of a problem or too much of a worry. It should be rectified and that is fine.”
Seth Twum Akwaboah
Power outages expected in coming months
The Chief Executive Officer of the GRIDCo, Mr Jonathan Amoako-Baah, has disclosed that the country will, experience some power outages. This is as a result of ongoing projects across the country.
He explained that there was enough capacity to meet demand. However, works on the Pokuase and Kasoa substations, as well as other transmission have accounted for the intermittent outages.
“Ghana’s system peak demand is close to 3,200MW with an installed capacity of 5,300MW. This means there’s enough capacity to more than meet demand. Some intermittent outages are to be expected on the grid in the coming months due to ongoing projects”.
Jonathan Amoako-Baah
He noted that, there is a general willingness and commitment by all stakeholders in the sector to work reduce its impact on its customers.
GRDICO requests ECG to interrupt power supply
Meanwhile, the Electricity Company of Ghana has approved GRIDCo’s request to put out a power ration timetable.
The notice by the ECG indicates that this largely affects parts of the Volta and Oti Regions from today, March 18 to Monday, March 22, 2021.
The move, according to GRIDCo, is to enable it to undertake repair works on transformers supplying the two regions.
Areas affected include parts of Ho, Adaklu Ahunda, Sogakope, Akatsi, Keta, Adidome and its environs and are expected to experience power outages.
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