Energy Commission to fix Ghana's chronic power crises

Dr Kwame Ampofo, the Board Chairman of the Energy Commission, has announced plans to eliminate problems riddling the power sector and fix permanently the country’s chronic power crisis. spanning ears.

The programme to resolve the challenges in the power sector, and fix it, could be divided into three phases of implementation – ‘Short, Medium and Long terms,’ he said in a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency.

Dr Ampofo's statement on the “state of the nation address (2016): matters arising,” explained that phase one of the project aimed at managing the crisis, while phase two looked at consolidating the gains.

He said managing the crisis, under phase one had been achieved while the disparity between supply and demand had been removed.

“ Indeed, 3,000MW generation capacity is to be added by 2020,” Dr Ampofo said.

An initiative to ensure automatic timers to be fitted to deep freezers was also being considered to isolate the freezer during the peak period of 18:00 hours to midnight.

For every one million freezers fitted with this device, 250 - 300MW of power could be saved off the peak or the national load profile, he explained.

He said the commission would also expedite President Dramani Mahama’s National Rooftop Solar Programme to cover 200,000 rooftops.

“The result of this programme will be to shave off 200MW of power from the grid, additionally; the inclusion of net metering technology will enable beneficiaries of the programme to interconnect with the grid.”

“This means that, each of such buildings becomes a small generation plant that supplies self-generated solar power into the grid to boost the utility of the grid.

“As more homes are constructed, so will self-generated power grow to support the grid with inexhaustible power from the sun and from every home and every rooftop,” it said.