Ministry of Power hints – Dumsor likely to return in 2 weeks

• Posted on April 8, 2016
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

The Ministry of Power has indicated that the country may fall back into another load shedding in the next two weeks.

This news comes a few weeks after President John Mahama told Parliament in his state of the nation that his government had overcome the four-year old crisis following a fairly stable power supply since January.

According to the Power Ministry, the expected load shedding may result from their decision to rest some hydro plants, which will reduce the power generation capacity. Although there is enough generation capacity, the sector managers are unable to run the generators due to the shutdown of the FPSO.

The situation has also been compounded because Nigeria is only about ten percent of the required supply from the West African Gas Pipeline. Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, the Deputy Minister for Power, John Jinapor, said his Ministry had not been shedding power for the past three weeks as some sections of the public have alleged, but he revealed they now intend to rest some of the hydro plants.

Mr. Jinapor conceded that his outfit was unaware of the exact impact of their decision to rest some of the hydro plants but explained that this course of action is being taken to ultimately protect the hydro plants. “We are going to have technical meeting and we will take it from there. The exact impact I am unable to tell now until we finish that meeting; but clearly we must protect the integrity of the hydro dam.

You can run them for a period of time but you can’t risk running all of them beyond a certain period.” Mr. Jinapor stopped short of explicitly saying there will be load shedding but he did concede that, it was very likely that there would be a deficit in Ghana’s power generation. According to him, “In the next few weeks, it is a tight situation for us and we can have some deficit. It is very likely we will have deficit… it’s likely.”

Mr. Jinapor was of the view that tough decisions like these are needed to protect the long term integrity of the hydro plants. “As tough as the decision may be, if it is the right decision, we won’t hesitate to take the right decision… I prefer to rest the dams and some of the turbines for the next two weeks than to risk running them for the next two weeks for whatever expediency and then have a major problem ahead.

I think that we should also think long-term and so we will take the right decision. We wouldn’t compromise the integrity of the dam,” he reiterated. Until we control our fuel, we always risk ‘dumsor’  The Deputy Power Minister explained that Ghana had all the infrastructure in place to ensure the power situation was a thing of the past saying, “I did indicate that from the power sector, we have put in all the mechanisms.

All the machinery to ensure that we resolve it… we have more than we need in terms of generation capacity. Until we control our fuel, until we bring all those Gas fields or at least those that can fire the thermal plants on, we still have a challenge,” Mr Jinapor stated. Conflicting explanations Government has given various conflicting reasons for the recurring power crisis.

In December last year, government increased the cost of electricity and introduced new taxes in the petroleum sector all in a bid to improve power generation.

By Delali Adogla-Bessa