Jinapor assures Ghanaians of stable power as Akosombo works near completion

Energy and Green Transition Minister John Jinapor has appealed to the public to remain calm following a power outage that affected parts of Accra and other parts of the country on Thursday, August 20.

The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) said in a statement that the disruption, which lasted several hours in some areas, was caused by a fault on the Akosombo-Volta transmission line.

Speaking at the commissioning of a new office complex for the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), Dr Jinapor explained that the latest incident was linked to a temporary arrangement introduced after an earlier incident severely damaged critical transmission infrastructure at Akosombo.

According to him, the government had to choose between shutting down the Akosombo power plant for about six months to undertake a complete reconstruction of the control centre or adopting a temporary arrangement that would allow the facility to continue generating electricity while permanent works were carried out.

He said the government opted for the temporary measure to prevent the prolonged shutdown of the plant.

“As ministers had a decision to make, I decided that we should go by the temporary measure whilst we put in place a permanent solution,” he said.

Dr Jinapor said engineers had since been working to maintain the temporary system, which had supported the country’s power supply over the past few months.

He noted, however, that the temporary arrangement remained vulnerable to frequency disturbances, which could trigger the automatic shutdown of the Akosombo facility as a safety measure to protect the wider power system.

“Because the temporal measure occasionally, when there's some frequency disturbance, it takes off Akosombo immediately to protect the system,” he explained.

The minister said work on a permanent control centre and related infrastructure was progressing and was expected to be completed next month.

He acknowledged the inconvenience caused by Thursday’s outage, noting that some parts of Accra and other areas experienced power interruptions lasting between one hour and one and a half hours.

Dr Jinapor, however, argued that the temporary arrangement had helped prevent a potentially much longer disruption by keeping the Akosombo plant operational.

“I can't compare that to having six months of Akosombo perpetually down,” he said.

He appealed to consumers to bear with the government and power sector engineers until the permanent solution was completed.

“I would appeal to the Ghanaians to bear with us. It hardly happens, but once in a while when you have a major situation, sometimes even brand new cars you get some challenges here and there,” he said.

The minister further assured the public that power had largely been restored across the country, with efforts continuing to reconnect areas that remained without electricity.

“I'm only happy to note that despite the challenge we've had this morning, GRIDCo has largely restored power to almost all parts of the country,” he said.

Dr Jinapor expressed confidence that the completion of the permanent works next month would strengthen the resilience of Ghana’s power supply system.

“I'm sure that by next month we'll swing back to the original plan and we'll have a much more resilient power supply situation,” he added.