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Nana Addo Tetebo, the Chief Executive Officer of Tower Rock Company Limited, addressing participants in the ceremony. Picture: EDNA ADU-SERWAA
Nana Addo Tetebo, the Chief Executive Officer of Tower Rock Company Limited, addressing participants in the ceremony. Picture: EDNA ADU-SERWAA

Energy C’ssion advocates law on solar power

The Energy Commission is advocating the promulgation of a law to make it compulsory for new buildings to have a percentage of power needs generated through solar energy.

Such a law, it said, would require buildings to have architectural designs that would make it possible for solar panels to be built on the roofs.

The Chairman of the Energy Commission, Dr Kwame Ampofo, who made the proposal, explained that the solar power would complement power from the national grid and would require houses to be wired in such a way that it could relieve a certain percentage of power from the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), while another part used solar energy.

He was speaking at a ceremony where certificates were presented to 920 electricians certified by the commission in Accra yesterday.

He said the commission was working with the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing to make it convenient for residential and commercial buildings to have some requirements of their power generated by themselves.

Take advantage 

He, therefore, urged the certified electrical wiring professionals to upgrade themselves and take advantage of the upcoming solar electrification project.

For his part, the National President of the Ghana Electrical Contractors Association, Mr Nana Addy Tetebo, appealed to the government to consider reducing the taxes on imported electrical tools which they used in their operations.

He said imported measuring instruments such as earth resistance and insulation resistance testers used to attract three per cent taxes but the taxes had soared to 17.5 per cent.

“This development has made the prices of these instruments and other electrical tools too expensive for electrical practitioners to acquire. We are, therefore, appealing to the government to at  least reduce the tax rate on these tools to three per cent to make it affordable for us,” Mr Tetebo said.

No connection 

Delivering a keynote address, the Director of the Technical Regulation, Renewable Energy Promotion and Energy Efficiency Unit of the Energy Commission, Dr Nii Darko K. Asante, said all buildings requiring electricity connection were expected to use the services of Certified Electrical Wiring Professionals (CEWP).

Dr Asante said with effect from 2017, any building which was wired without the use of a CEWP would not be connected to power by the Electricity Company of Ghana or the Northern Electricity Distribution Company.

The lead officer of the CEWP, Mr Solomon Sarpong, in a remark, said out of the 1,223 electricians who registered to undertake various categories of electrical wiring examination from the Energy Commission, 920 of them passed the exam.

That, he said, brought the total number of certified electrical wiring professionals in the country to 4,000, including 75 electrical inspectors.

He said a special unit had been set up at the Energy Commission to monitor the work of the certified electrical wiring professionals and urged people with complaints to report any CEWP who did shoddy work or failed to comply with standards. 

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