Corporate Communications Manager at the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo), Mr Ebenezer Amankwaah has revealed that some parts of the country will soon experience intermittent power outages to enable engineers and contractors to work on some substation plants dotted across the country.

Mr Amankwaah told Dzifa Bampoh on the First Take programme on 3FM on Monday, March 29 that the GRIDCo is currently in discussion with the management of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to release a load shedding timetable to enable the people of the affected areas plan their lives properly within the period of the maintenance project.

He further explained that the maintenance work on these substation plants has become critical in order to completely resolve the challenge of congestion.

“There is the Pokuase substation that is being funded by MiDA that is taking some of the load from Accra.

“The load is growing because of the population growth and infrastructure growth so you need a lot of substations that can take the load so that they do not congest by the overuse of the stations already in the existence.

“When you go to Kumasi for instance the issue of congestion is still prevalent, there is the issue of Bui Dam as a peaking plant which has also gone down giving rise to low power in Kumasi. So you hear some of the people in Kumasi complain that every minute the light goes off because there is peak demand and when peak demand is high and there is congestion because of various substation it is bound to cause outages,” he explained.

He added “I can also highlight some of the projects we have to solve these problems. In Kumasi there is a Kumasi-Kintampo transmission line project which has been earmarked to be completed in July.

“…when you come to Accra the Pokuase substation is supposed to take some of the loads that transmit to Accra to free up space on some of the substations so that congestion will be eased.

“There is a Kasoa Bulk supply plant that is being constructed also by MiDA which is also going to serve the same purposes

“As I speak with you we have had several requests from some of the contractors that are working on the projects who are asking for some outages to enable them to expedite action on their work by July from the country to have their relief and for customers to be comfortable.

“Some of the outages are same day outages in March, some of them are about four days between April and May, and some of them are asking even two weeks or three weeks outages.

“So we as the transmitter will now have to work with ECG as to how we can minimise the impact on customers, how we can balance load distribution so that people are not necessarily overly affected. We are discussing that with ECG currently so that wherever there is the need to inform the affected areas of potential outages we will do that with ECG taking the lead, giving us the areas and all also the hours or the duration so that people are comfortable

“We are looking at this week to engage all the stakeholders and get to an appreciable agreement on the areas to be affected when they will be affected and the duration.”