General News of 2012-10-17

Power cuts over next month- President assures

The load-shedding exercise which has been occasioned by a shortfall in gas supplies is scheduled to be over by November, the Chief Executive of the Volta River Authority (VRA), Mr. Kweku Awortwi, has said.

According to Mr. Awortwi, the hydro plant at Akosombo and the thermal and steam plants in Takoradi and Tema respectively were expected to generate an additional 300 megawatts of power by November.

He said the plants would be able to generate 300 megawatts to take care of the 200 megawatts which should have been provided by the Asogli Power Generation Plant, which depends on gas supplies from Nigeria, suffered a setback in its power generation as a result of damage to gas supply pipes of the west Africa Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) in Togo in August this year.

Speaking at a stakeholders' meeting organised by the Public Utilities and Regulatory Commission (PURC) to discuss power supply challenges in Accra yesterday, Mr. Awortwi said, “The 300 megawatts-200 from the VRA and 100 from the SSNIT plant-will replace the 200 deficit of Asogli Power and add 100.”

The meeting was attended by President John Dramani Mahama, Chief Executive Officers of the Electricity Company of Ghana and the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), captains of industry, employers, labor and consumer association representatives.

Mr. Awortwi said if WAPCo began supplying gas by December this year and the Asogli Power Plant started operation, an additional 200 megawatts of power would be added to make the power situation more stable in the country.

Addressing the opening session, President Mahama said the damaged portion of WAPCo pipes in Togo which supplied gas to the Asogli Power Plant had been fixed.

He said the company was currently doing test trials on the pipes, noting that within the next few weeks, the company would start supplying gas to the Asogli Power Plant.

President Mahama said while the country waited for the start of gas supply from Nigeria, it should focus on generating power independently to feed the country and sell the surplus.

He said it was for that reason that the government had taken steps to generate about 5, 000 megawatts of power by 2016 to end power shortage and make Ghana a net exporter of power.

Additionally, he said new transformers would be procured to reduce the load on existing transformers and prevent power fluctuations.