The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has debunked claims of commencing a load shedding exercise in some parts of Accra from October to December 2021.

It said it had no plans of commencing power outages, as such plans would be effectively communicated to the public and its customers.

The Managing Director of ECG, Mr Kwame Agyeman-Badu said this at a press conference in Accra on Wednesday (October 6, 2021).

He was responding to some media publications on Tuesday on a planned load management along side the publication of a said time table which was to be used for the load shedding from October to December 2021.

Mr Agyeman-Badu said the publication had created fear and panic within Accra.

“We have enough power supply and we also have enough gas to support our generation plants to supply adequate power to our network,” he said and insisted the media houses that released the publication about the load shedding time table did not get their facts right as they failed to verify from the company.

ECG, he said publishes time tables for load management “and until we communicate in this direction, please do not believe what you see. You can always call us to verify.”

Interventions

To stabilise power supply in the Greater Accra Region, the ECG MD recalled that the Minister of Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh announced at the beginning of 2021 that there would be various interventions.

Following the announcement, Mr Agyeman-Badu said the ECG informed the public and the company’s customers about the construction of the Pokuase and Kasoa Bulk Supply Points (BSP) under the auspices of the Millennium Development Agency (MiDA.)

Currently, he said the Pokuase BSP has been completed; the Kasoa BSP is almost completed and a third intervention which requires the stringing of lines from Tema to Achimota, Achimota to Mallam and then Achimota to Accra Central was being managed by GRIDCo.

The GRIDCo intervention, he said was in three phases with the first phase which is from the Tema BSP to Achimota completed while the second phase which is from Achimota to Mallam almost done.

On the third phase which is from Achimota to Accra Central, he said “we are now preparing for the last phase of the upgrade works which requires engagements with stakeholders and regulators to agree on the final date to commence work. We have just started with the process of discussing with GRIDCo to know the impact of the works on power supply.”

The engagement with stakeholders, he said, was necessary because the company had to consider the impact of the project on its customers in order to devise means to mitigate it.

“We are yet to come out with the final time table and the date of commencement,” he said.

He said the last phase of the GRIDCo projects has been on-going without any major outages within the city. For your information, it is likely we may not undertake any load shedding during this final phase of the GRIDCo project since we plan to transfer load to the Kasoa BSP. “

The ECG MD assured all its stakeholders it had enough generation of power supply for continued stable power.

“If there should be the need for any planned outage we will inform the public accordingly," he added.