Consultant responsible for the Millennium Development Authority, MiDA’s Ghana Power Compact II, SMEC says the compact has helped to increase power reliability and supply capacity for the country.

The Ghana Power Compact, funded by the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA), appointed SMEC to support, assist and represent MiDA by assuming full responsibility of the management of portions of the Compact Programme related to works and services, from design preparations and conducting studies, through supervision of works, project oversight for services-related assignments, commissioning and the defects liability period.

Speaking to Joy Business at a Close Out event climaxed with Golf Tournament at Achimota Golf Club House, the Regional Manager for SMEC, Jose Fernandes said he is proud of the compact’s achievements so far.

“It’s a five years’ work of managing probably one of the most challenging projects in Ghana and we have done basically 15 projects on the electricity, improving the power in Ghana. We did the design, managed the contractors and our goal was to reach the stage with all these projects completed”, he said.

Mr. Fernandes added, “I think we have done it and I am very proud of my team so I congratulate all of us.”

Lingering issues

The SMEC boss however admitted that there is still a lot more to do in addressing the challenges in the power sector.

He therefore admonished government to invest more in the sector.

“This is a good example that ECG, GRIDCo and the government of Ghana can continue implementing for the future to address a reliable power supply to all of us”, he said.

Ghana’s power sector has been identified as constituting a critical binding constraint to the growth of the national economy.

The identified constraints of the power sector are two-fold, namely unreliable electricity supply and insufficient access to electricity.

With the combined challenges of persistent high load growth and limited addition of generation capacity, the margin between generation capacity and maximum demand has reduced considerably over the last 10 years.

The Compact sought to address these challenges by creating an enabling environment for private investment in additional generation, enhancing the governance and regulatory environment of the Power Sector and strengthening the corporate governance, operational efficiency and financial viability of the power distribution utilities.

Engineer of SMEC Ghana, Munesu Dizamuhupe, said the Power Compact was to solve issues.

“The Power Compact was put togther by the government in conjunction with the MCC to help the power sector in Ghana to solve certain issues - technical losses in the transmission system and non-technical losses like power theft, etc. Most of the projects we implemented were all tailor-made to solve these solutions.” said Mr. Dizamuhupe.

Golf Tournament

The PMC Compact II close out lunch was climaxed with a golf tournament by staff of SMEC.

Ben Johnson and Louise Serfontein emerged overall winners of the Men’s and Ladies’ Invitational Tournaments, winning 42 and 39 points respectively.

Majdi Joher, and Malclom Watson followed up with 37 points each.

SMEC has operated in Ghana since 1976 and established a permanent office in Accra in 1998. SMEC’s first project was a feasibility Study and Detailed Design services for the Bui Hydroelectric Power Project.

Since then, SMEC’s project experience in Ghana has spread across various sectors of Ghana’s growing economy and has completed about 3,300 projects in over 87 countries, with a talent pool of over 6,000 people working within a global network of over 75 offices across Asia, Africa, Australia and North and South America.

Following the completion of these projects, they have supported the significant reduction in the technical losses in GRiDCo’s transmission system and in ECG’s power distribution systems, thereby contributing to improving the financial viability of these utilities.