Valco to cut down its power consumption

The Government has directed Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO) to close down two pot lines with effect from midnight on Wednesday to provide the nation with the needed reserve to avoid national load shedding.

Mr Albert Kan-Dapaah, Minister of Energy, announcing this in a statement to Parliament on Tuesday said the action had become necessary in view of the current state of power supply.

"The situation has been regrettably erratic, thus fuelling all sorts of speculation. What is happening now constitutes a culmination of unfortunate incidents which were being seriously addressed." The Minister, however, gave the assurance that there would be no power crisis.

Mr Kan-Dapaah said when it became clear towards the end of last year that there would be pressure on the supply situation, Volta River Authority (VRA) came out with a plan to inject 150 MW in April this year and asked VALCO to reduce their consumption that supplied two lines.

He said the actual installed capacity of VRA was approximately 1,652 MW, with additional facilities to import 250 MW from Cote d'Ivoire.

Mr Kan-Dapaah said the shutdown of VALCO's lines was an action to resist the temptation of generating more than 750 mw from the hydro-sources given the dangerously low levels of water in the Akosombo and Kpong dams.

"The installed capacity of 1,652 MW and the import facility of 250 MW provide VRA with a normal capacity of approximately 1,900 MW which compares with a total capacity demand of 1,210 MW.

"Under normal circumstances, therefore, they have a reserve margin of about 690 MW which is a very healthy margin. For some reasons, however, they are unable to utilise the full installed capacity."

The Minister said following the failure of the rains last year, VRA was producing only 750 MW instead of the installed hydro capacity of 1,072 MW.

Mr Kan-Dapaah said the two plants at Takoradi, one owned by TAPCO and the other by VRA, would generate a total capacity of 560 MW. He expressed regret that since its installation TAPCO had hardly generated half of its capacity.

The Minister explained that whenever there was an accident at a unit, thermal or hydro, or it had to undergo repairs or planned maintenance, the VRA had to shed load. "Unfortunately we have walked from one accident to another hence the irregular supply."

Mr Ken-Dapaah said there was the need to draw a distinction between the power crisis of 1998 and the power problems now being experienced. "In 1998, we did not have any significant thermal complementation and we simply did not have enough supply capacity to meet demand.

"Today, we have enough supply to meet demand except that there is no reserve margin whenever we have an accident and need to shed load."

He said there were still distribution bottlenecks such that even if Electricity Company of Ghana had all the power it needed, their ability to distribute and supply the power would still continue to be in doubt. However, the VRA anticipated the problems and was prepared for them.