Ranking Member on Parliament’s Mines and Energy Committee, John Jinapor has called for a thorough investigation into a recent power outage that elicited two separate press releases from the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), and the Ghana Grid Company Limited, GRIDCo. 

The Yapei-Kusawgu MP believes that the government is not being transparent with Ghanaians as far as the energy situation is concerned.

According to him, the explanations given by the two agencies for last Friday's widespread outage that hit parts of the country, do not add up. 

In an interview with Evans Mensah on Joy FM’s Top Story on Monday, July 10, the former Deputy Minister for Power under the erstwhile Mahama administration said there are stand-by generators and thus the outage cannot be attributed to a faulty generator. 

“Well, I'm very surprised because the plant is designed to have a backup generator. So if the generator that supplies power to the plant goes off automatically, a backup generator ought to pick up and deliver power because energy supplies are critical.”

“This calls for a total investigations by the regulator and the Ministry of Energy, because how one generator goes off and the entire plant has to be served up is unacceptable in this industry. Power supply is very, very critical,” he said. 

Meanwhile, a Policy Analyst, Dr Stephen Manteaw has also berated the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) for its silent on the issue. 

Dr Manteaw said the Commission is failing to protect the consumer as it is mandated to do. 

According to him, this lackadaisical attitude is most undesirable to consumers and must be called out. 

“For me, what is most disappointing in all of these is the silence of the PURC on this matter. We are yet to hear from PURC on this matter. Let me put on record that the PURC is an independent arbiter responsible for the protection of consumer interest and to ensure that we get the best of service.”

“So, if there has been this major challenge in the power sector and for many hours now, they are yet to tell us anything, then for the want of a better expression PURC is sleeping on the job,” he said on Joy FM on Monday. 

The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), operators of the National Interconnected Transmission System, announced on Friday evening that there was a deficit in thermal power generation due to limited gas supply from the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant (GPP), and the West African Gas Pipeline (WAPCo).

The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), also in a release on that same Friday, July 7, apologised to consumers who experienced power cuts as a result of the situation.

But the West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo), on the other hand, denied the claim by the Ghana Grid Company Ltd (GRIDCo) that there was a shortage of gas due to the company’s inability to supply gas. 

The Ghana National Gas Company also in a statement issued on Monday, July 10, apologised to consumers for the inconvenienced caused.

“Ghana National Gas Limited Company’s policy of continuous improvement of our processes, enables us to strengthen our business as the strategic partner of the various power generation companies, serving the people of Ghana.”

The national gas company also indicated that the incident was caused by an upset of their on-site power generation system which led to a temporary shutdown of the Atuabo Gas Processing Plant last Friday, resulting in a shortage of gas supply to the power generating companies.

“This resulted in about 30% reduction in the gas we deliver to our downstream power and non-power customers. Our engineers and third-party contractors worked assiduously around the clock to restore normal operations in 5 hours.”

“During the 5-hour outage Ghana Gas made alternative arrangements for emergency mobile power generation units to enable natural gas to be transported to various power generation companies to mitigate the unexpected situation.”