We have enough capacity to meet electricity demand — Energy Minister

The Minister for Energy and Green Transition, Dr. John Abdulai Jinapor, has assured Ghanaians that the country now has sufficient electricity supply to meet demand following recent power challenges.

The assurance comes after engineers restored six turbines that went offline due to a fire outbreak at the Akosombo GRIDCo substation.

According to the Ministry of Energy, the incident knocked out about 1,000 megawatts from the national grid and worsened intermittent outages.

The outages had initially been attributed to transformer upgrade works by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

Speaking on Accra-based JoyNews’ Newsfile programme on Saturday, May 2, Dr. Jinapor said the situation has now stabilised after swift technical intervention.

“As we speak now, we have enough capacity to meet demand. The mission was to restore the turbines as soon as possible,” he said.

He disclosed that initial assessments suggested it could take up to six months to restore full operations, but engineers devised an alternative approach that significantly reduced the repair time.

“Initially, we were told it could take six months… but the team came up with an alternative and indicated they could finish it in one week, and they have proven that they can do it,” he noted.

Dr. Jinapor further revealed that government is planning to construct a new ultra-modern control centre to replace the ageing facility, which was originally built in 1984.

He said the recent incident has highlighted the urgent need for a more resilient and modern infrastructure capable of withstanding major disruptions.

According to him, a proposal will soon be submitted to Cabinet to secure funding for the project as part of efforts to ensure long-term stability in the power sector.