ECG urged to halt upgrades, adopt redundancy to avoid prolonged power outages
The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has been advised to suspend its ongoing transformer upgrade programme and reconsider its approach to prevent months of intermittent power outages across the country.
Executive Director of the Africa Sustainable Energy Centre (ASEC), Justice Ohene-Akoto, criticised ECG’s current method of shutting down entire supply points before undertaking upgrade works, describing it as avoidable and technically unnecessary.
Under existing safety protocols, ECG isolates supply points by switching off power before replacing transformers. However, in an interview with the Business and Financial Times (B&FT), Ohene-Akoto argued that such an approach disrupts electricity supply unnecessarily and reflects a lack of innovation.
He urged the company to adopt network redundancy—an approach that provides alternative power supply routes during maintenance—to ensure that upgrades can proceed without cutting power to consumers.
“Engineers are expected to find solutions that allow modernisation without plunging communities into darkness. If the upgrade works were paused today, the outages would cease. ECG must re-strategise and incorporate redundancy into its operations,” he stated.
ECG has attributed recent intermittent outages to critical system upgrades, including the replacement of ageing transformers. The Minister of Energy and Green Transition, John Abdulai Jinapor, has indicated that the exercise could last between three and six months.
But Ohene-Akoto described the timeline as unacceptable, warning that prolonged outages would impose significant hardship on households and businesses.
The situation has been compounded by a recent fire outbreak at the Akosombo Hydroelectric Plant on April 23, which damaged the facility’s primary control room and forced a shutdown. The incident removed about 1,000 megawatts (MW) from the national grid, triggering widespread power disruptions.
The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) has since restored four generating units, returning approximately 550 MW to the grid.
Despite these challenges, Ohene-Akoto maintained that Ghana’s power generation capacity remains sufficient. He noted that the country’s installed capacity exceeds 5,700 MW, while peak demand stands at about 4,300 MW. Even with the temporary loss from Akosombo, available capacity should be adequate to meet demand.
“At the moment, capacity is not the problem; reliability is. We have enough power, but the issue lies with the network,” he explained.
He further identified structural weaknesses in the country’s power distribution system, particularly the concentration of generation facilities in the southern part of Ghana. According to him, transmitting power over long distances to the middle and northern belts increases the risk of outages when transmission lines fail.
To address this, he called for the decentralisation of power generation by establishing more plants closer to demand centres, especially in the northern regions.
Currently, the northern part of the country relies on minimal generation capacity, with only about 5 MW of solar power available.
Ohene-Akoto acknowledged efforts to relocate the AMERI thermal power plant from Aboadze to Anwomaso near Kumasi but noted that its 250 MW capacity is insufficient to meet growing demand.
He warned that failure to expand generation capacity could lead to a future supply crunch, as demand continues to rise.
“If we do not increase capacity in the coming months, we risk approaching our generation limits and potentially exceeding them. We must streamline the upgrade process and decentralise power generation to strengthen the system,” he cautioned.
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