Many end-users are profoundly skeptical about the load-shedding plan announced by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), Ghana’s major distributor of electricity, which became effective Tuesday, September 23.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Consumer Rights Protection Agency, Mr Kofi Kapito, echoed the sentiments of many Ghanaians when he sounded the caution that ECG should ensure that they stick strictly to their plan to regain some confidence from disenchanted end-users.
Here is why. ECG, time without number, has explained and practically demonstrated that they have no control over the supply of power that is available to consumers at any given time. Their claim that the monopolist transmission agency, GRIDCo, intervenes on the spur-of-the-moment with directives for ECG to shed off significant loads, sometimes up to 300MW, severely undermines their ability to cope with their planned schedules.
But GRIDCo also puts up a similar defence. It only transmits what the power generators make available to them and if distribution schedules have to be suspended in an impromptu manner, it is merely a reflection of the situation upstream; so their narrative goes.
Therefore, the notoriously erratic power supply situation can be located right within the generation function. It is not the argument that transmission or distribution challenges do not sometimes hobble supply to consumers but, comparatively, they are far less rampant especially with ongoing efforts at upgrading their systems.
A careful scrutiny of the generation situation tends to validate the assertions of the mid to downstream operators to a large extent.
The country has experienced four major crises with power supplies, in 1984, 1998, 2007 and 2013, which incidentally is of the longest duration with the last episode still raging. But while the earlier three were all due to droughts, because generation was solely dependent on the Akosombo and Kpong hydroelectric dams, the current challenge has to do largely with the inability to secure hydrocarbon feedstock for an increasing number of thermal plants that augment the hydro sources.
Ghana’s total installed generation capacity is currently at 2,828MW, comprising the three hydro dams of Akosombo (1020MW) Kpong (160MW) and Bui (400MW) and eight thermal plants with a total output of 1248MW.
It must be noted that current generation capacity meets just about total national demand with little or no strategic reserves to cushion supplies, should any of the generation plants require a shutdown, either for routine maintenance or to address a major challenge.
It is now the case that the country has not been able to secure regular supplies of gas, the most economical primary energy for generating power from the thermal plants, and that has been a major constraint on supply of power. But apart from the 200MW Sunon-Asogli plant which runs solely on gas, the other plants can be fuelled by the relatively more expensive light crude oil (LCO).
The Energy Minister, Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, has however disclosed that VRA, the leading power generator in the country, spends about US$3 million daily in procuring LCO to power its plants.
That obviously is a drain on the financial resources on the state-run VRA but, more importantly, engineers of the power generator have said that switching regularly between LCO and gas also comes with its problems for the thermal plants and do not encourage the frequent change from one fuel source to the other.
This argument seems to lend credence to a growing conspiracy theory that whenever there are challenges with gas supplies, rather than resort to LCO, the VRA prefers to shut down the plants. Some industry observers note that it is a curious coincidence that many thermal plants are reported to have to go for impromptu maintenance, aside their regular routine maintenances.
The flip side of the same argument has been that it is a curious coincidence for the announcement of the said unplanned maintenance of the plants to come exactly when there are challenges with gas supplies and must be a cover for the government’s unwillingness to spend on LCO.
A very recent example of such situations is the recent supply crunch resulting from a stall in deliveries from the West Africa Gas Company (WAPCo), attributed to labour unrest in Nigeria, where it was immediately put out that a couple of VRA thermal plants would have to be closed down, yanking off an unprecedented 500MW from generation. That situation forced the ECG to postpone its planned announcement of a load-shedding programme for about a week.
Increasingly, skeptical consumers of electricity are therefore now openly apprehensive of the current programme being reliable.
Industrial and commercial consumers are currently pushing that whatever the situation, government must always find money for the procurement of LCO whenever there are challenges with gas supplies since the adverse impact of the poor electricity supplies is more telling on the economy than whatever it costs financially to secure fuel for the thermal plants.
To end-users, the current challenges with power generation and its corollary of unreliable electric power supplies are more a political issue than a technical one.
Graphic Business