Energy Commission: “4000 megawatts of power sitting idle in Ghana”

• Posted on June 19, 2019
• by Ellsamwise King
• Comment

The Energy commission has revealed that the country has almost 4,000 megawatts of power in excess in its fold.

The Commission says Ghana is battling to trade the excess power because the price has been set high.

The excess power came as a result of power purchase agreements signed with independent power producers as a means to deal with the erratic power supply that hit the nation some 5 years ago.

Speaking to Starr Business Dr. Nii Darko Asante, a technical Regulation Officer at the Energy Commission said that currently there is over 1,000 megawatts of capacity not being used.

According to him, there’s no need for the excess power, because there’s no one to generate it for.

He said “our peak has been about 2,700 megawatts, that’s the highest number that we have had. We have almost 4,000 megawatts sitting there. There’s nothing you can do, it’s there, that’s why I said we should avoid this happening.”

He added “we are exporting what we can export, we are trying to export more, but it’s not there. The demand is not there, our price is high too so it’s hard to sell it. So that’s the reality, that’s why we shouldn’t be doing this and we should ever let it happen again.”

“But we should make sure that in saying that it should never happen again we shouldn’t go to the other extreme and become in shortage in 5 years to come,” he said.

He however noted that “it’s an expensive place to be, to have 1,000 megawatts and more that you are paying for and you are not using.”