Load-shedding begins

Ghanaians have to brace themselves for another load shedding exercise as the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) will this week release a guide for the management of load in the country.

The time-table, which is expected to be quite similar to the one released in April this year. Under the exercise, customers will be without electricity for 12 hours and enjoy power for 36 hours.

William Hutton-Mensah, Managing Director, Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), who disclosed this last week to the media in Accra, said several meetings by stakeholders took place last week to ensure the release of a timetable this week.

He said allegations that ECG was reluctant in publishing a load-shedding timetable was not correct, stating that “we have had several meetings on the quantum of load that we are being asked to shed.

Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, Minister of Energy and Petroleum, last week at the meet-the-press encounter, outlined measures the government was taking to stabilize the country’s power crisis.

He said government was working to add about 355 megawatts of power to the installed capacity after the completion of the 110MW expansion work on the TICO plant, Units 1 & 2 of the Kpone thermal power plant (220MW) from Trojan Power.

Kofi Buah said, “We are in advanced stages of procuring a 450MW capacity fully flexible and ready to deploy emergency power ship system to Ghana.

“The first and second 225MW units are expected to commence commercial operation in the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2015 respectively.”