Lip services do not generate power – Minister told

Energy think-thank The Energy and Associates Ghana has challenged the Minister of Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, on his recent claim that Ghana is nowhere near dumsor.

A warning issued by the think-tank in a statement said the country’s generated capacity is way lower than what the Minister mentioned and that explains why there is power outage at the slightest glitch.

“In the minister’s press engagement recently he erroneously relied on installed capacity of 5288mw suggesting we are no where near dumsor,” the warning signed by Director of Research Ibrahim Kwame Baidoo said.

“However his own data presented during his presser shows that available generation capacity is 3861mw, with a peak demand of 3469mw. This means with the least technical glitches there will be outages, because we do not have enough generation to manage shocks in the system.”

Find the full warning below:

Politicising power must be a thing of the past since almost all governments under the 4th Republican dispensation have had it’s fair share of the energy crisis one way or the other. The time has come the we pay attention to the real problems in the sector. This is not the time for promises.

If we dont make the necessary investments and pay critical attention within the sector, we are likely to experience the unfortunate situation we had in 1997, 2007 and 2015.

Looking at our cumulative generation and the projected demand going forward government must bring on stream at least between 500MW to 1000MW of new generation. This is not the time we should be making phantom promises because we have an experience to learn from.

We project a deficit of about 300mw in 2024/2025 if we dont add on new generation.

The Energy Commission project demand in 2025 to be 4921mw whereas our total generation plus available committed projects (early power and pwalugu hydro dam) sits at 4840mw.

In the minister’s press engagement recently he erroneously relied on installed capacity of 5288mw suggesting we are no where near dumsor. However his own data presented during his presser shows that available generation capacity is 3861mw, with a peak demand of 3469mw. This means with the least technical glitches there will be outages, because we do not have enough generation to manage shocks in the system.

This explains the recent frequent outages we are experiencing. Today you cant go a day in the country without experiencing an outage here or there. This is a signal to us as a country, we need to add onto the Early Power project and Pwalugu dam which is only bring in 490mw, however we require not less than 1000mw of generation. Anything less will hit us hard sooner.

Source: 3news.com|Ghana