The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) says it issued over 100 power outage notifications within the first two and a half months of this year, with the majority attributed to maintenance activities.
This information was disclosed in response to a request from the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) for the ECG’s records of power outage notifications in the current year. Out of the 3 inquiries posed to the power distributor, this response was the only one due by March 27th. Key among the PURC’s requests to the ECG was the provision of a schedule for load shedding.
As per the PURC’s assessment, the ECG did not adhere to 2 of the 8 directives, including a crucial one: the release of a load-shedding timetable. The PURC has informed the commissioners of ECG’s failure or inability to provide this information, leaving them to decide on the appropriate course of action, which could potentially involve sanctions as previously mentioned.
According to the Ghana Energy Commission’s 2024 forecast, there will be a reliable capacity of 4,756 MW ready for the grid to fulfill the estimated system peak demand of 3,788 MW.
Nevertheless, considering planned maintenance for generating units and the fuel supply situation, the available capacity might decrease by some 356 MW.
Thursday’s [March 28, 2024] power outage notice issued by the ECG was labeled as a ‘GRIDCo outage,’ impacting a total of 69 areas, all located in Tema.
In Tema area 1, which mainly comprises residential zones, 32 different areas experienced the outage, including Afienya, Christian International School, the entire Prampram township, Dawhenya, and several others.
Similarly, Tema area 2, which is primarily industrial, also faced the outage, affecting 37 different locations such as Japan Motors, Unilever, GPHA Terminal 1&2, the Tema Oil Refinery Pumping station, Dangote Cement, Dzata Cement, Cocobod Warehouse, and 30 other critical sites.