The Executive Director of Kumasi Institute of Technology and Environment (KITE), Ishmael Agyekumhene says parts of Accra could experience intermittent power outages regardless of the schedule provided by the Electricity Company of Ghana.
Speaking with Gifty Andoh Appiah on The Pulse, Ishmael Agyekumhene revealed that the power systems used by the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) automatically shut down after recognising a fault within its system.
According to him, the systems have been programmed to prevent any damage, hence would shut down despite the efforts of personnel.
“I won’t be able to talk about ensuring consistency because of the things that you heard the GRIDCo boss saying. In fact, some of the outages are done by the machine themselves. He talked about microseconds because as soon as there is any instability at all, the system will detect that and if you don’t act, the system will act on your behalf so as to ensure that no damages occur,” he said.
His comments follow concerns raised by a section of the general public about the capability of the Electricity Company of Ghana to be consistent with the outage schedule it has provided despite its inability to stay true to its words in previous circumstances under the erstwhile John Dramani Mahama administration.
On Tuesday evening, ECG released the list of areas to be hit by the eight-day power outage initiative starting from May 10, to enable the company to complete ongoing works by GRIDCo.
According to the company’s CEO, Agyemang Budu, 12 hours would be the maximum time period an area would be in darkeness.
Reacting to the concerns raised, Mr. Ishmael Agyekumhene dismissed claims that personnel with ECG could deliberately deny parts of the capital access to electricity.
He noted that it is in the interest of these power providers to keep the power on since it is their primary responsibility to sell power or electricity to consumers in the country.
“We shouldn’t forget that what these utilities do is basically sell power so it is in their interest as much it is in our interest to ensure power is on. I am not too sure they will take it out when it shouldn’t be off. So if they tell you they will do 12 hours and within or before the 12 hours the light goes off, then there is another problem which probably they didn’t anticipate,” he stated.
In addition, the energy analyst indicated that the presence of the schedule is good news because it tells consumers “you can do A and not do B because you are going to have outages at a certain time.”
“It is better than nothing when you are there and suddenly the light goes off,” he added.
Mr Agyejumhene is optimistic that outages witnessed in the Greater Accra Region would come to a halt by July.
“For Accra, once the Pokuase substation is ready, we have always been told that the Accra problems would have been solved… So I am quite sure that knowing what I know, the Pokuase project is very much on course so by July it is very likely that Accra will not experience those outages anymore,” he said.
