The Ghana Grid Company Limited says the closure of an emergency valve at the West Africa Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) is to blame for power cuts in parts of Ghana on Wednesday, March 3, 2021.

According to the company, the action ended up curtailing “gas supply to some generating plants in the country”.

“To avert a total system shutdown, power supply to some Bulk Supply Points was disrupted, causing outages in parts of the country,” GRIDCo announced in a statement.

Parts of Ghana were off from the power grid early Wednesday morning with many Ghanaians taking to social media and other platforms to raise concerns.

They claimed such has been the case in the past few days and had demanded the release of a load-shedding timetable from the country’s power managers.

GRIDCo in a statement called for calm assuring that engineers are currently on-site working to restore gas supply and ultimately get the affected parts back on the grid.

“Key stakeholders in the power value chain, including WAPCo, are currently working to restore gas supply shortly. Meanwhile, arrangements have been made for other generating plants to come online to restore supply to the affected areas.”

GRIDCo had given a similar excuse for power cuts last week. According to the company “on Saturday, February 27, 2021 gas supply challenges emanating from the Offshore fields, led to the loss of power supply totalling about 1,000MW.”

Below is the full statement from GRIDCo on the latest power interruption:

POWER OUTAGES IN PARTS OF THE COUNTRY
Tema, Wednesday, March 03, 2021 – Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) wishes to inform the general public that, at approximately 06:30 AM on Wednesday, March 03, 2021, the closure of an emergency valve at the West Africa Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo), cut off gas supply to some generating plants in the country.

To avert a total system shutdown, power supply to some Bulk Supply Points was disrupted,
causing outages in parts of the country.

Key stakeholders in the power value chain, including WAPCo, are currently working to restore
gas supply shortly. Meanwhile, arrangements have been made for other generating plants to
come online to restore supply to the affected areas.

Any inconvenience caused is deeply regretted.