Weak grid system caused blackout – Energy Minister

Boakye-agyarko-vetTHE Minister for Energy, Boakye Agyarko, has attributed last Monday’s power blackout to “a weak national grid system.”

According to the Minister, “we have not completed work on the national grid system and so in its weakened state, any disturbance either in or out of Togo or Cote d’Ivoire, can shut down the grid system.”
Speaking to The Finder on the sidelines of the maiden Energy Summit in Accra yesterday, Agyarko explained that there was a disturbance on the 330k transmission line in and out of Cote d’Ivoire and once that disturbance occurred, it affected the transmission system.
The two-day summit themed ‘The Future of Energy in Ghana’ is providing a platform for stimulating discussions that would find expression into policies and strategies of the sector and the investment opportunities therein.
“What happened last night was to isolate the line into Cote d’Ivoire and bring everybody back on,” he said.
Mr Agyarko recalled a similar incident in May which was not detected early enough.
“On the 3rd of May, it was the Asiakpe-Togo line that got disturbed; we didn’t see it early enough but it got isolated and then all the other power generators were brought back on,” he explained.
Elaborating, the Minister said “when the transmission gets affected all the power generators must disengage to protect the assets; engineers then go in to identify the particular line that is affected; they isolate that line and restore power.”
Ghana had failed to invest enough in its transmission systems, bulk supply systems, sub-stations and transformers.
It was more about money than a technical problem, the Minister intimated, pointing out that “because we have not managed the money rightly the technical people have not been able to do what is required of them; that has turned a financial problem into a technical one so the genesis is a financial problem.”

By Isaac AIDOO, Accra

ABOUT: Nana Kwesi Coomson

[email protected]

An Entrepreneur, Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Communications Executive and Philanthropist. Editor-in-Chief of www.233times.com. A Senior Journalist with Ghanaian Chronicle Newspaper. An alumnus of Adisadel College where he read General Arts. His first degree is in Bachelor of Arts - Political Science (major) and History (minor) from the University of Ghana. He holds MSc in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Energy with Public Relations (PR) from the Robert Gordon University in the United Kingdom. He is a 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow who studied at Clark Atlanta University in USA on the Business and Entrepreneurship track.

View all posts by: Nana Kwesi Coomson  

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

ABOUT 233TIMES

233times is a Ghanaian media house which serves as a major source of exclusive interviews ,music and video downloads, news and more.

233times reports on major events,news covering entertainment, politics, sports, business, technology, etc from within Ghana, Africa and beyond.

We have a platform for the amateur artistes to portray their staggering talents ...more...

CONTACT US

For further enquiries, please contact us via our contact us page link: CONTACT

WE ON SOCIAL MEDIA. FOLLOW US


To advertise with us or make enquiries, please visit 233times.net/advertise or call Selorm (Selorm) | Selorm (Nana Kwesi)