Several parts of Ghana have been thrust into darkness, due to insufficient gas to power the machinery used to generate electricity in the country.
The Ghana Grid Company Limited, GRIDCo, the nation’s power distributor firm has revealed that the situation had led to a supply gap of 550MW at peak time at the Tema power plant, near the capital city, Accra.
The main outage had begun on Thursday evening.
Ghana is at present, going through its worst economic crisis experienced in a generation.
A June research revealed that the country’s current energy provision was “precariously unhealthy and verging towards a power crisis”.
The electricity situation, which could worsen in the coming years, has been heightened by the country’s monetary distress, according to the report by the Centre for Socioeconomic Studies, CSS, study.
Independent power producers in the country had in July, threatened to close down operations over the debt owed to them by the state-run Electricity Company of Ghana.
GRIDCo, had released a statement on Thursday, October 26 stating that the power operator had revealed that electricity supply to consumers in various parts of Ghana would be cut down as a result of a restricted gas supply to Tema power plant.
The power utility firm had at the time of filing this report, not revealed what had caused the problem with gas supplies, nor disclosed how long it would take for normal supplies to resume.
Ghana has been experiencing power shortages aka ‘dumsors’ for several years.
The term ‘dumsor’ is an Akan language that simply translates to on and off.
The West African country receives much of its electricity from hydro and thermal sources, but these are more often than not, badly maintained.
