Mr. Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah, the Minister of Energy and Petroleum, has said it was important to support the Volta River Authority (VRA) with operational and maintenance experts at the Takoradi Thermal Plant.

He said the experts would assist to maintain the thermal plant and keep it running to provide the country with energy at all times. Mr Buah made the call when he inspected work on the maintenance and installation of new thermal equipment at the Takoradi Thermal Plant at Aboadze.

He had earlier held a closed door meeting with officials of the VRA and the Takoradi International Company (TICO). Mr Buah said power was needed in vital areas of the economy, and in this connection, power outages must be minimized.

Mr Osafo Adjei, General Manager of TICO, said the company was generating 110 megawats of power with one of its simple cycle turbine at the Thermal Plant. He said one other simple cycle turbine was under-going maintenance, and would have been generating power had it not been for problems resulting from assembling of its parts.

Mr Adjei said the problems had been rectified and the turbine would hopefully begin generating additional 110 megawats of energy by July 1. He said expansion works would be carried out on the two turbines and converted into a combined cycle turbine with capability of generating 330 megawats of power.

Mr Richard Oppong-Mensah, Acting Director of Thermal Generation of the VRA, said the Authority was generating 100 megawats of power with a gas turbine because of works on another gas turbine. He said the “Installed capacity of the two gas turbines and one steam turbine is 330 megawats of power.”