By Ogova Ondego
Published August 10, 2015
Ghana shall hold a two-day conference aimed at addressing its power shortage crisis in September 2015.
Ghana’s Minister for Power, Kwabena Donkor, shall preside over the meeting that shall bring together top level representatives from the public sector to the West African country’s capital, Accra, September 17-18.
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Ghana’s demand for electricity–2,400 MWs–exceeds available power generation–1,600 MWs–capacity, leaving a deficit of about 800MWs at peak.
The planned conference, according to a media release from Powering Africa Ghana, shall seek “to push through Emergency Power arrangements to beef up the supply situation.” Besides seeking to add about 1,000 MWs to the national power grid by the end of June 2016, the meeting shall also explore the possibilities of pursuing medium to long term solutions to the current power shortage.
The Power Ministry, Dr Kwabena Donkor, is quoted as having said in July 2015, is “also taking steps to add in excess of 5,000MW generating capacity from natural gas, clean coal and renewable energy sources within the next five years.”
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The country is said to be restructuring the Electricity Company of Ghana Ltd (ECG) and the Northern Electricity Company Ltd (NedCo) to deliver effective customer service to consumers and to strengthen their financial bases to be better off-takers of Power Purchase Agreements.
“The main power generation utility, the Volta River Authority, is also being fundamentally altered to respond quicker to the changing electricity landscape,” says the media release that is sent via African Press Organisation. “The Government has announced its intention to create two separate entities from the VRA of today. A new publicly owned entity will be carved out of the existing VRA to concentrate on thermal generation in partnership with the private sector actors while the remainder will concentrate on hydro generation.”
