Ghana’s power situation is expected to deteriorate significantly by 2025, according to Nana Amoasi VII, Executive Director of the Institute for Energy Security (IES).
This warning comes amidst ongoing challenges with intermittent power outages, known locally as “dumsor.”
This stark warning follows remarks made by the Minister of Energy, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, on Monday, March 25, 2024. Dr. Opoku Prempeh responded to critics advocating for a load-shedding timetable to produce one themselves.
Speaking in an interview with Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show on Tuesday, March 26, 2024, Nana Amoasi VII elaborated on the looming crisis, painting a grim picture for the future of Ghana’s power supply.
“From 2025, the situation is going to get worse. Because your debt in the sector is increasing every day. Money or cash in the power sector is like the lubrication in your car, Bernard, so it goes up. When you don’t have enough lubrication in your system, what happens is that there is friction, and there will be tears. When that happens, there is going to be a collapse in the sector [which] is almost collapsed.
“It is going to be worse. And why we believe it’s going to be worse is that the managers are not even admitting the problem. The first point to solving your problem is knowing the problem, admitting and finding ways to resolve it,” he stated.
Among the other challenges identified, Nana Amoasi VII highlighted the financial woes at the end of the supply chain, where savings are insufficient to cover costs, leading to debts across the board.
The lack of funds has resulted in a weakened grid, both in transmission and distribution and without resolving these financial issues, Nana Amoasi VII fears that Dumsor will persist.
“The money we’ve saved at the tail end of ECG and NEDCo is not adequate to cover all the costs incurred in the process or the chain. That is why today we owe fuel suppliers, today we owe fuel transmitters like WAPCO, today we owe the power generators and we owe the power transmitter, GRIDCo.
“We owe ECG and we owe NEDCo, the entire chain. Let me use the ECG… it is true that the 630 transformers were not served or were not upgraded. Or there was no planned programme because there was no money. Because 630 transformers cannot be overloaded overnight. If it is the case that it happens overnight then there is something wrong in the system.
“Until we resolve these financial constraints, dumsor is going to be with us for a very long time. I pity the next government that will be formed. We are going to inherit a cliff and not a deep hole and when you are at the edge of a cliff. When you fall, it is big and bang.
“Because of the kind of hole that has been dug, or how low we have been dropped, at the power sector, Bernard, you have no idea. In fact, we want to call on the PURC to extend the investigation beyond the ECG to cover the entire value chain.”
