GRIDCo takes blame for blackout in parts of Ghana

The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) has accepted blame for the total blackout experienced in some parts of the country Tuesday night, and apologised to Ghanaians for the outage, which triggered backlash against the Power Distribution Services (PDS), formerly ECG.

Some parts of western and northern Ghana, as well as most parts of Accra were affected by the outage that happened few minutes after 7:00pm Tuesday. It was heralded by low current and fluctuations.

GRIDCo explained Wednesday that the power outage was caused by a system failure of its transmission lines in the west tripped together with all generating units at Aboadze, Bui, Asogli, Kpone and the Kpong generating Stations.

According to the power transmission company, within three minutes, the tripped lines were restored, but “it took some time for some thermal generating units to restart resulting in the long outage”.

It said power has since 6:57am Wednesday morning been restored to all bulk supply points, and assured the public it will continue to work with all stakeholders to provide adequate supply to customers.

Earlier, PDS issued a statement to explain the outage experienced in western and central Accra was due to technical challenges upstream.

It said power supply to the Mallam and Graphic Road Bulk Suply Points (BSPs) was curtailed as a result of the technical challenges.

“Immediately the situation is rectified, power supply will be restored to affected customers,” said it said Tuesday night.