The Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has presented its State of the Energy Sector and is among other things asking government to renegotiate or abrogate all Emergency Power Contracts that have failed to yield results.

Addressing a press conference to highlight issues pertaining to the country’s energy sector, the Deputy Executive Director of ACEP Ben Boakye noted that although the centre acknowledges the efforts being made by government to address the power situation in the country – albeit a partial fulfilment of the promised generation addition in 2015 a lot more needs to be done.

As part of measures to address the power crisis, Government signed a number of such agreements with some Power Producing companies.

Some of these resulted in the arrival of the Kar-Powership and the Ameri plants, among others.

At a press conference, the Deputy Executive Director of ACEP Ben Boakye, however emphasized, it’s about time most of the contracts were at least renegotiated, or completely abrogated to ensure value for money.

“You have the 370 Megawatts AKSA emergency plant, the 300 Megawatt TEI emergency plant and the 300 Megawatt GEE Power Projects.

“All these emergency plants have failed to deliver on their timelines and that’s why we are saying that if we have hope that KTPP and Asogli phase 2 Project will come on stream this year, then we don’t need these emergency plants including the Karpower barges that are coming” he noted.

The energy expert therefore believes Ghana would obviously need more power in the long-term – landed Independent Power Producers, IPPs or power plants so “if there is any opportunity to renegotiate for their failure to deliver on time, then this is the time to do it, or we cancel the contract” he stressed.

ACEP is doubtful the current generation of about 1900MW of power would able to satisfy the country’s demand for power from the grid, which at peak stood at 2,100MW in 2014, and projected by Energy Commission to reach 2300MW in 2015.

This, it noted does not even cover demand from Valco, which requires about 350MW to operate fully. It also under-estimates the projections in the demand for power, estimated to grow at 12% in 2015. The centre is therefore asking government to expedite action in realizing the promised 5,000MW by end of 2016.