Consumers have to brace for another round of load shedding as the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) readies to announce a timetable for the recurrent ritual next week.
CEO of the power distributor, Eng. William Hutton-Mensah said on Wednesday that several meetings among sector managers have taken place towards the release of a timetable.
“We have had several meetings on the quantum of load we are being asked to shed. Just yesterday we had another meeting at the ministry,” he said in response to a question when the Energy Ministry took its turn at the Meet the Press Series.
“This week we are going to finalise the average of the quantum that we will shed. We are hoping that next week we should be able to come out with the timetable.”
Already the Volta River Authority has been denying rumours that the unscheduled load shedding taking place across the country will end by September ending.
The load shedding has been blamed on maintenance and expansion works at power plants, reduction in water levels in the Akosombo and Bui dams and the now chronic reduction in gas volumes from Nigeria.
Lack of gas has been particularly worrying for the nation; light crude oil, which could run dual fuel thermal plants, is expensive and so not much of is purchased.
The country’s own gas from the jubilee field, which could have brought some relief, is yet to come on stream, leaving sector managers in a fix, and making stable power supply a dream for consumers.
Sector managers say that the country has 2845megawatts of generation capacity while peak demand is around 2000megawatts. Ideally, therefore, Ghana should not be in a power crisis.
Out of the close to 3000megawatts, however, only about 1600megawatts is available due, principally, to the fuel supply challenge, minimally to maintenance and expansion issues.
