Ghana is set to ease itself back into the era of erratic electricity supply “Dumsor” as the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) discuss modalities for releasing a power rationing timetable.
This is despite intense denial from the two companies in the past weeks when power fluctuations forced consumers to conclude that the era of Dumsor had returned.
The ECG and GRIDCo had claimed the power rationing was to allow for maintenance of power infrastructure.
The Corporate Communications Manager at GRIDCo, Mr Ebenezer Amankwaah has revealed that some parts of the country will soon experience intermittent power outages to enable engineers and contractors to work on some substation plants dotted across the country.
Mr Amankwaah told 3FM on Monday, March 29 in an interview monitored by Whatsup News that the GRIDCo is currently in discussion with the management of ECG to release a load shedding timetable to enable the people of the affected areas to plan their lives properly within the period of the maintenance project.
He further explained that the maintenance work on these substation plants has become critical in order to completely resolve the challenge of congestion.
“The load is growing because of the population growth and infrastructure growth so you need a lot of substations that can take the load so that they do not congest by the overuse of the stations already in the existence,” Mr. Amankwah explained.
“When you go to Kumasi for instance the issue of congestion is still prevalent, there is the issue of Bui Dam as a peaking plant which has also gone down giving rise to low power in Kumasi. So you hear some of the people in Kumasi complain that every minute the light goes off because there is peak demand and when peak demand is high and there is congestion because of various substations it is bound to cause outages.”
In the past weeks, the country had experienced unannounced power interruptions as consumers suspect the government was sneaking in Dumsor on them.
It appears the announcement of a dumsor timetable may not come as a surprise to consumers as they had been bracing for the inevitable.