Solar power and VRA's promise
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Like the typical Ghanaian, I committed it all to God. Somehow there is a psychological soothing in that kind of commitment. I am content, having taken on that simplistic kind of attitude because really, the frustration of power on today power off the next hour is still with us. Just last Friday, in my area, power went off in the morning came back on and then later in the afternoon it went off again. We had our water supply cut off for 24 hours. Come Saturday morning, we got water back but our lights went off temporarily. Sunday in the middle of Church service, power was off again. What else can one do but to wait in earnest?
Nonetheless, in the midst of all the groans and gripes, the good news coming our way is that one promise is on the verge of being redeemed and with that probably will come some improvement in our power supply. It gladdens one’s heart to hear that in the midst of all the cries, the Volta River Authority’s (VRA) promise of solar energy has become a reality.
In one of my writings two years ago, I had the opportunity to commend VRA for a promise they had unveiled concerning their moves into the direction of wind and solar energy. At a public lecture organised as part of the Authority’s golden jubilee celebrations in 2011, their Chief Executive, Kweku Andoh Awotwi told Ghanaians that the VRA had initiated moves to generate wind and solar power in the country. In his lecture, the Chief Executive told us that the sites for the solar and wind power had already been acquired in the northern sector of the country for the installation of the solar equipment.
In that article on the lecture promises, I said that though one would applaud and welcome the new move by VRA, it was long overdue especially coming 50 years after Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah’s flagship hydro-power project at Akosombo. The promise indeed was not just an anniversary talk to make the Authority feel good on the eve of its golden jubilee celebrations. The signal we are getting today is that that information we received has been backed by action as VRA gets ready to inaugurate its first solar power plant at Navrongo in the Upper East Region.
According to a story published by the Daily Graphic in its Wednesday May 8th edition of the paper and headlined, “VRA Completes first solar plant in Navrongo”, the Authority, as part of its corporate policy to develop renewable energy sources to augment its power generation, will soon publicly unveil the Navrongo solar power plant. The plant is said to be a two-MW facility, the largest PV plant in West Africa aside of those in Cape Verde. The plant is expected to be expanded to 2.5 MW. Does this call for applause? Maybe yes.
Yes for the simple reason that in the face of inactions coupled with other failed promises with something as critical to our economic and social wellbeing, one fulfilled promise which has the potential to transform lives has become a reality for good no matter how long it has taken to get us there. What is exciting about this piece of news is that not only is this the first solar plant to be installed by VRA; it is in reality, the largest PV plant in West Africa.
On the other hand too, depending on how one looks at it, we may not need to applaud VRA that hard for another simple reason that it has taken them too long to do what they should have done probably 30 years or more ago when there were signs that the population of Ghana was growing and traces of industrial expansion were gathering momentum.
Business people have always made us aware of the need for diversity and so they try to avoid over dependency on a one-legged business. For this reason, they take advantage of prevailing circumstances, the availability of resources as well as a compelling business need to drive opportunities. There is no dispute that there has always been a need in Ghana for alternative sources of energy. That is why the question, “why has it taken VRA this long” become relevant in the argument.
The Authority did not need a good fifty years to diversify to an environmentally sustainable renewable power generation when the sources for such power generation are over in abundance in this country. Surely the signs necessitating the shift from hydro-power dependency must have come to them way back as a business. Apart from the fact that we are endowed with sunshine and wind, we know that VRA has had the best of Ghana’s engineers and other technical minds.
It used to be, and I pray it is still, the wish of the best of Ghana’s graduate engineers to work for VRA; so really, attracting the best talents could also never have been a problem for the Authority.
It was in the heat of the energy crises earlier this year that somebody said something which had to this day made a lot of meaning to me. As a country with bountiful talents and resources, our people in authority seem to keep tight lipped about pressing national issues and needs to the extent that issues that could be openly discussed with all the best brains we have are lost until we reach a crises point before we scream for help.
Now that we know that such alternatives could be fixed in bounds within the shortest possible times, VRA should ride on this goodwill coming their way and quickly look into an alternative power that is secure, reliable and sustainable with improved public health, protects the environment and addresses climate change. That would be the greatest corporate social responsibility legacy VRA could leave for the people of Ghana.
As we welcome VRA’s commitment to redeem its own promise by completing the first ever solar plant to be produced in Ghana and the largest grid PV plant in West Africa, we would like to plead that as the population increases and industries sprawl, Ghana would need many more of such interventions. We are therefore looking up to them to get us going as fast as possible.
While we wait for the rest of the promised megawatts of solar energy to be added on, we are also mindful that VRA is yet to make good the other part of their promise of 2011 – to look into wind power for which we have been told locations have already been identified.
After having gone through such tortuous energy crises as the one we have had at the beginning of this year, one would definitely throw every weight behind such progressive efforts to see us completely out of the woods. We wish VRA well with the rest of their moves to add on many more alternative sources of environmentally friendly power generation in Ghana.
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