The current disagreement between the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) and the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has been deemed “unnecessary” by Edward Bawa, the member of parliament representing the Bongo Constituency.
Ghana has been dealing with “dumsor,” or sporadic power outages, for a number of months.
These power outages are at the heart of the dispute between GRIDCo and ECG, with ECG blaming GRIDCo in a number of press releases.
Concerns have been voiced by GRIDCo regarding ECG’s incapacity to offer a load-shedding schedule during these disruptions.
A letter dated March 28 from GRIDCo to Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, the Energy Minister, emphasized ECG’s disregard for the National System Control Center’s (NSCC) load-shedding management guidelines.
In a Face to Face interview on Citi TV with Umaru Sanda Amadu, the MP asked if some people working in the energy industry understood what they were doing.
“It’s unnecessary rivalry, and it’s just a question of sometimes people do not seem to understand how the system works,” Mr. Bawa said, casting doubt on the qualifications of some people in the energy industry.
He chastised ECG for failing to adhere to GRIDCo’s power distribution policies.
“I’m fully in support of what GRIDCo is doing, on a daily basis, they compare the supply and demand. If the supply is lower than the demand, there will be a system shutdown, they have to match.”
“If GRIDCo thinks that they are not matching and that the demand outstrips the supply, they will then tell all the distributors that I know that in our statistics, your load is this between this period and that period of time, so share this amount of power,” he told host Umaru Sanda Amadu.
In order to prevent a complete blackout in Ghana, the former Public Relations Officer for the Energy Ministry emphasized that GRIDCo frequently has to cut off certain areas from the power grid when ECG disobeys its orders.
“They tell them ahead, by 4 pm they would have had a fair idea and will let everybody know. GRIDCo will tell ECG to share X amount of power, ECG will sit down and say that it will not share power.”
“And put all their customers on, GRIDCo sitting at the control room will see that their system is compromised. And so, on the basis of that, they will be forced to take some people off and override ECG’s decision. They look for the largest load somewhere and dump them to be able to stabilize the system,” he underscored.
Mr. Bawa questioned ECG’s decision to withhold a customer timeline, blaming its hesitation on a political move by the government.
“GRIDCo said ECG publish a time schedule, we have a crisis, if you are going to put people off, be equitable in that. But if you don’t do that, and as a system, I will not know that you have lights off yesterday or not? GRIDCo is an emergency situation.”
“That is political, the moment ECG publishes a timetable, it’s an official declaration of ‘Dumsor,’ that is the word the NPP government doesn’t want to go.”
