The Africa Centre for Energy Policy, ACEP is challenging President Mahama’s declaration that 800 Megawatts of Power has been added to the country’s generation mix.

The President made the announcement in the State of the Nation Address last Thursday – adding the power crisis that crippled many businesses and left many jobless has now ended.

But the Africa Centre for Energy Policy says the crisis is far from over as the amount of power added to the national grid is below the 800 Megawatts. 

The Deputy Executive Director of ACEP, Ben Boakye questioned the President’s statements in an exclusive interview with JOY BUSINESS.

He noted that he is still yet to comprehend how the computation was done to arrive at that 800 Megawatts addition to the grid.

“The additions we have seen from where we sit where the Karpower is giving us 225MW, Ameri 250, plus the steam turbine at TICO producing 110 MW, so you add all that together and it’s about 580MW so I don’t know where the excess is coming from.

”These he said are even not enough to allow for the full operation of companies like Valco which is not operating at full capacity.”

Akosombo which has always been the country’s major source of power is currently struggling to produce at optimum due to lack of rainfall.

Last year for instance it was producing about 600 and 700 Megawatts of power but is now only doing about 300 to 370 Megawatts.

This, Mr. Boakye says should inform managers of the sector that the country is still not out of the woods in respect of power “so we have to keep working harder to ensure that we increase generation.”

“The relative stability we have in power supply is not just as a result of the new plants that have been added.

The truth is that plants that existed but for some reason we could not procure fuel for, we now have crude oil to fire them and that has added a lot to production” he stressed.

He also questioned why managers of the sector did not buy crude oil earlier to keep businesses afloat but waited for them to go under.

This for him, “speaks volumes about our planning as a nation and how we intervene with solutions to help industry and electricity consumers to keep their businesses.”