Ghana has excess power; current ‘dumsor’ transmission issue – Energy expert

Energy Expert Kwadwo Nsafoa Poku has said that the current power outages experienced especially in some parts of Southern Ghana is not a generation problem like the country faced from 2012 to 2016 under the leadership of John Dramani Mahama.

According to him, the country has excess power and 5000 megawatts of power to distribute to the people of Ghana.

He indicates that the current power challenges the country is facing has to do with transmission and distribution.

Kwadwo Nsafoa Poku indicates that unlike 2012 when power was distributed to a few places, currently, Ghana’s power distribution has increased especially in parts of Kumasi and Accra and although there has been an increase, the same cannot be said about the infrastructure in which the distribution will be done through.

“In Ghana, our fundamental problem is planning. President John Dramani Mahama said he wanted to fix the problem. If you say you are fixing a problem then that will be the heading underneath it will be the bullet points. Since they decided that they were going to increase the generation, that brought the distribution and transmission problem. I don’t think a lot was done about it at that time.

Two things that were not done well for me is where they placed the power plant. Everyone wants to build power plants but when you ask them they say it will be done in Tema and Takoradi. If there is a problem in the South of the country we are in deep trouble because everything we have is along the coast.

There could have been long term planning. Do we necessarily need to build our plants here? We could have laid pipelines in the next four, five years from Accra to Bolga. The national infrastructure plan says by 2047 Ghana should have 50,000 megawatts of electricity. If that is the plan, the population will be about 51 million by then. We can generate all this power in the South”.

He noted that in Ghana, politicians are blamed for every mishap but there is the need for civil servants and technocrats to also take a fair share of criticisms because they have also un a way contributed to Ghana’s power problems because of the lack of planning.

Source: ghanaweb.com