Government has been asked to either find the money to invest in power generation now or facilitate the private sector to bring in their money.
The Director of the Kumasi Institute of Technology, Energy and Environment (KITE), Mr Ishmael Edjekumhene, said, “as far as power generation was concerned in the long term we have to find the money now”.
However, in the short to medium term, he said Ghana has only one choice to find the best way possible to conserve energy.
“Everybody must conserve energy, the private sector must conserve energy, you must conserve energy and all of us must conserve energy because that’s the short-term measure. Otherwise we would not be able to get out of the situation at all,” he said in an interview with the GRAPHIC BUSINESS in Accra.
He said Ghanaians should be prepared “because this thing is going to carry us into next year. It would be worse next year because we don’t have enough water in the Volta Lake too.”
KITE is a non-profit development organisation and a leading actor in the energy, technology and environment sectors in Ghana and the West Africa Sub-region.
Mr Edjekumhene said there were no shortcuts to solve the power crisis except to invest in those power plants or create the environment for the private sector which has the money to bring in and build the power plants.
He said, “We needed to give them the right tariffs to come in and build the plants on their own if the government does not have the money”.
What went wrong?
Mr Edjekumhene said the country found itself in the current situation because the decision that had to be made about five years ago was not made.
“We only talk, we only complain, government will make promises and will not deliver on that and it is exactly what we are doing now. The solution is that we have to stop talking and act now,” he said.
Solution
To arrest the situation, going forward, he said: “We have to make the investment decision now because the minimum period needed to build a power plant is 24 months, which is when you are really doing a fast track approach. So if it’s a thermal plant, it would be a minimum of 24 months, if it’s a hydro plant forget it. Bui started in 2005 and not until 2012/13 that it was completed.”
He said the problem now is generation problem, and that the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has its own problem such that even if the Volta River Authority (VRA) was able to supply ECG with power we would still have outages, though they would not be long as we have now as the distribution network also has to be fixed.
Mr Edjekumhene said in spite of the challenges, demand is increasing by 10 per cent each year such that not only are we trying to fix current faults but we need to plan with the projected growth increases in the demand as well.
“So if we talk about fixing 500 megawatts deficit, it is 500 megawatts plus another 200 megawatts or 280 because 10 per cent of 2,800 is about 280 and government doesn’t not have the money but the private sector has money, but they are not Father Christmas, they are not VRA, they wouldn’t produce electricity for free but are here to make money, so if you can’t produce the energy you give them, they come and they tell you how much it will cost to generate and make a return on investment,” he said.
He said in the long term, the country needed to decide if it would use oil money to build power plant or to fix tariffs.
Independent Power Producers
According to him, a major problem facing the Independent Power Producers (IPP) is getting buyers for the power they generate.
Therefore, he said it was not enough to invite them to come and produce but somebody would have to sign a contract with them to avoid what Asogli, for instance, is experiencing with ECG owing it.
Attempts to get electricity
Installed capacity for power generation is estimated at 1,960 megawatts (from hydro and thermal sources) growing at about 10 per cent annually. In the medium to long term, an additional 2000 megawatts will be needed in order to catch up with demand.
This is further compounded by irregular supply of gas from Nigeria contrary to contracted quantities.
With domestic and industrial demand estimated to be 10 -15 per cent year on year, it is obvious that innovative options of identifying new sources of power generation are pursued.
Experts say Ghana needs to double its energy capacity within the next four to eight years. GB
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