Ada estuary to give Ghana 1000 megawatts of electricity

• Posted on July 15, 2014
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG,) has engaged a Swedish company to produce 1000 megawatts of power using the environmentally friendly tidal wave technology.

To this end, the Swedish company would utilise the exceptionally strong tides at the Ada Estuary by placing a hydro power plant under the sea to convert the tide into energy, the ECG announced over the weekend.

Mr George Marfo, Manager of ECG Training School who announced this during a workshop for journalists on the operations of the company, said the move was part of the ECG’s commitment to engage power producers to generate adequate amount of electricity for distribution to customers.

He disclosed that the Swedish company which signed an agreement with the ECG last week would by December generate five megawatts of power and would periodically upgrade its generation capacity by 200 megawatts until it reaches the intended 1000 megawatts by 2016.

Mr Marfo said owing to the growing demand for power; the initiative would ensure adequate power for businesses and domestic use.

He said the technology to be employed by the company has been deployed successfully in Peru where the tides are not as strong as that of the Ada Estuary.

He said studies in the area indicate that it is a suitable location to site the underwater hydro plant.

Mr Marfo also said the ECG had engaged two other independent power producers who had use the technology to generate power on ships to produce 450 megawatts of electricity for the company.

He said that most of the current power imbalances in the national grid was as a result of generation difficulties.

Tidal energy is produced through the use of tidal energy generators. These large underwater turbines are placed in areas with high tidal movements, and are designed to capture the kinetic motion of the ebbing and surging of ocean tides in order to produce electricity.

Tidal power has great potential for future power and electricity generation because of the massive size of the oceans.

-GNA