Load Shedding In Full Swing

William Hutton-Mensah, ECG Boss

There Seems to be no end to the power rationing exercise, and Ghanaians have to brace themselves for further load shedding, as the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) will this week release a guide for the management of load in the country.

The time-table, which is expected to be quite similar to the one released in April this year, will see power supply being curtailed for 12 hours and restored for 36 hours. William Hutton-Mensah, Managing Director, ECG, who disclosed this to the media in Accra last week, said several meetings among stakeholders had taken place towards the release of a time-table this week.

He said allegations that ECG was reluctant in publishing a load-shedding time-table was not correct, stating that 'We have had several meetings on the quantum of load that we are being asked to shed.'

Emmanuel Armah Kofi-Buah, Minister of Energy and Petroleum, last week at the 'Meet-The-Press' encounter, outlined measures the government was taking to resolve the country's power crisis.

He said government was working to add about 355 megawatts of power to the installed capacity from the completion of the 110MW expansion work on the TICO plant, Units 1 & 2 of the Kpone thermal power plant (220MW) from Trojan Power.

Kofi-Buah said, 'We are in advanced stages of procuring a 450MW capacity fully flexible and ready to deploy emergency power ship system to Ghana.

'The first and second 225MW units are expected to commence

commercial operation in the 1st and 2nd quarters of 2015 respectively.'

BY Cephas Larbi
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