Ministry to procure 1,000MW of power to resolve crisis

President John Dramani Mahama said the Ministry of Power would procure and feed into the system, 1,000 megawatts of emergency power as an immediate measure to resolve the current energy crisis.

The President, delivering the State of the Nation Address in Parliament on Thursday, said guarantees were currently being agreed for Karpower ship from Turkey to provide 450MW, APR from the United Arab Emirates to provide 250MW and GE 300MW.

He said following the power purchase agreements entered into with several Independent Power Producers and plants that Volta River Authority was working on, the country expected to inject 3,665 MW of power into the power transmission grid, from this year and over the next five years.

The President said completion of planned steam generation units on some current single cycle plants, such as TT1, CENIT and KTPP would add another 330MW to the generation and that when the planned addition of 3,800MW to the generation was realised, it would assure the country’s energy security into the future.

President Mahama said the Ministry of Power was working urgently on proposals to restructure the power sector beginning with the Volta River Authority and the Bui Power Authority to bring the management of the hydro plants under one entity.

“This will lead to a consolidation of our thermal resources in partnership with pension fund managers like SSNIT and other institutional investors,” he said.

“If our plans for energy security are to succeed, radical restructuring of the downstream distribution sector must occur. Under the new Millennium Challenge Compact we have an opportunity to review, restructure and totally refocus the operations of, especially, the Electricity Company of Ghana”.

He assured Ghanaians that the ECG would be transformed into customer-responsive, efficient and profitable organisation and that part of ECG’s problems was the creation of Government institutions that believed that they were entitled to use power without paying for it.