Director of Communications for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Yaw Buaben Asamoa, has described the second round of power outages as a new kind of ‘dumsor’.
According to him, this round of ‘dumsor’ is unlike the previous one experienced during the erstwhile Mahama-led administration which was caused by a low power generation capacity.
He said the current ‘dumsor’ regime is occasioned by power transmission challenges, a situation which he says is more critical than before.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile Saturday, Mr Asamoa said: “This generation is different from the other generation. This second generation is a verb for a new situation which is an addition to the problems we were experiencing before; transmission challenges.
“So whatever is happening now, from my understanding, factually, is that we have adequate generation and we have increased consumption and that is putting pressure on our ability to transmit and distribute. So the infrastructure for transmission has come under extreme pressure.”
He added that due to the challenges being faced by GRIDCo to efficiently transmit power, it could lead to large swathes of the country experiencing power cuts.
“So the difference with the traditional ‘dumsor’ where one transformer in the neighborhood trips and the neighborhood goes off and a trip on GRIDCO main line is that, that’s a wholesale line and that means once it trips, a whole region could go off even if a particular part of that region wasn’t the direct source of the trip. So we had the situation where one day the entire country went off.
“The key thing now is that you could suffer an outage almost innocently because you’re on a wholesale line which is GRIDCO. So this is a more critical situation than before that we need to quickly upgrade transmission in order to stabilise the system.”
He, however, assured Ghanaians of the NPP government’s dedication to ensuring stable electricity supply to all.
“I know for a fact that government’s main objective is a consistent and affordable availability of power to ensure jobs, incomes as well as social use,” he said.
Meanwhile, GRIDCO at a press briefing said construction works on the Pokuase and Kasoa substations which are expected to be completed in July would rectify the intermittent power outages.
They are, therefore, pleading with customers to bear with the power sector for the next three months as they work on resolving the challenge permanently.