The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) says it was having a discussion with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) for them to provide a load shedding timetable following major maintenance works expected in the power sector from April to July 2021.

The Corporate Communications Manager of GRIDCo, Mr Ebenezer Amankwah in a radio interview with Radio Ghana monitored by Graphic Online on Monday night [March 29, 2021] explained that some parts of Ghana will soon experience intermittent power outages to enable engineers and contractors work on some substation plants across the country.

He said GRIDCo was currently in discussion with the management of the ECG for them to release a load shedding timetable to enable people in affected areas plan their lives properly within the period of the maintenance project.

He further explained that the maintenance work on the substation plants has become critical in order to completely resolve the challenge of congestion.

He said they will have to engage with the distribution company, "agree on specific timetable and communicate to the affected areas, which means that, not every area will be affected unless the project is in a particular area... and the duration within which it will happen."

He added that they were "sure that after July this year, these key projects will be completed" and there will be stability in the system.

He said they [GRIDCo] has received a lot of communication from the contractors and therefore they were hoping that by the end of this week, the meeting with the ECG on the load shedding schedule would have been completed.

Substation areas

Earlier, Mr Amankwa in a another radio interview with 3FM on Monday talked about the areas the constructors are to work on.

“There is the Pokuase sub station that is being funded by MiDA that is taking some of the load from Accra.

“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.

“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 a peak demand and when peak demand is high and there is congestion because of various substation it is bound to cause outages,” he explained.

He added “I can also highlight some of the projects we have to solve these problems. In Kumasi there is a Kumasi-Kintampo transmission line project which has been earmarked to be completed in July.

“…when you come to Accra the Pokuase substation is supposed to take some of the loads that transmit to Accra to free up space on some of the substations so that congestion will be eased.

“There is a Kasoa Bulk supply plant that is being constructed also by MiDA which is also going to serve the same purposes

“As I speak with you we have had several requests from some of the contractors that are working on the projects who are asking for some outages to enable them expedite action on their work by July from the country to have their relief and for customers to be comfortable.

Some of the outages are same day outages in March, some of them are about four days between April and May, and some of them are asking even two weeks or three weeks outages.

“So we as transmitter will now have to work with ECG as to how we can minimise the impact on customers, how we can balance load distribution so that people are not necessarily overly affected. We are discussing that with ECG currently so that wherever there is the need to inform the affected areas of potential outages we will do that with ECG taking the lead, giving us the areas and all also the hours or the duration so that people are comfortable

“We are looking at this week to engage all the stakeholders and get to an appreciable agreement on the areas to be affected, when they will be affected and the duration.”