Reconstituted GRIDCo board inaugurated
The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) has begun work on the Sunyani transmission lines to ensure the evacuation of power from the Bui Hydroelectric Power Plant.
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The completion of the transmission lines will ensure that the full complement of the Bui Plant is harnessed.
The sector minister, Mr Kofi Armah-Buah, made this known at the inauguration of the reconstituted board of directors of GRIDCo.
The eight-member board, chaired by Alhaji Huudu Yahaya, a private legal practitioner, has Dr Patrick Asebiah Buah, a computer engineer, Mr Anthony El-Adas and Daniel Yahaya, Kaipewura as members.
Other members are Mr Komla Dogbe Senanu, a legal practitioner; Alhaji Adam Munkaila, an entrepreneur, and Mr William Amuna, the Managing Director of GRIDCo.
According to Mr Buah, the completion of the transmission lines was also to position GRIDCo as the preferred power transmitter within the West African sub-region.
"It is in this light that government is making the needed investment to ensure that GRIDCo, as managers of the country's transmission lines, has in place a robust transmission infrastructure to effectively address shortfalls within the sector," Mr Buah stated.
He charged members of the board to be guided by principles that would ensure that government's goal of increasing the demand of electricity supply from 2,000 megawatts to 5,000 would be achievable.
Mr Buah was hopeful that the diverse background of the board members would enable them to strive to ensure they delivered on the mandate given them.
The MD of GRIDCo, Mr Amuna, debunked suggestions of a planned load-shedding to be carried out.
He indicated that while the demand for power had gone up by 30 megawatts from January 1, this year, officials were working to configure and convert the Takoradi International Power Company's (TICO) 125 megawatts plant to a combine cycle generator to increase supply.
"TICO's unit of 125 megawatts is presently running but would need to be configured. Thus if within the period anything happens to any of the generators, we may then have to shed load’ Mr Amuna said.
“Let me, however, put on record that there is no official or calculated load-shedding programme as is being speculated," he said.
Alhaji Huudu Yahaya, for his part, thanked President Mahama for the confidence reposed in them.
"We are aware of the enormous challenges the sector has faced in the past and continue to face, and we want to assure that we would do our best to address them," he assured.
