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The African Center for Energy Policies (ACEP) has observed with great concern the serious power cuts that have occurred over the last three days across the country, as well as their impact on business activities and the overall comfort of the people of Ghana. This incident occurred just two weeks after Power Distribution Services Ghana Ltd. (PDS) has taken over the management of Ghana 's electricity distribution (ECG) energy distribution sub – sector in Ghana, with the fundamental objectives of increasing reliability, reliability and efficiency. access and energy efficiency.
It is therefore not surprising that many Ghanaians, who are expecting a lot of PDS, blame PDS for this. As an independent think tank in the field of energy, ACEP considers that it is necessary to promote public understanding of the root causes of the situation. where this statement. In this statement, we explain the value chain of the interconnected electricity sector and how technical problems in the transmission chain have led to the current outages that Ghanaians are experiencing.
1. Ghana's Electricity Sector Value Chain Ghana's electricity sector value chain includes the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity, as shown in the infographic below: Customers, including ECG and NEDCO. Unlike in the past, when ECG was distributing energy directly to consumers, ECG currently serves as a bulk supplier to Power Distribution Services (PDS) Ghana Ltd. for subsequent distribution to consumers (houses, factories, businesses, etc.). From computer graphics, technical and / or non-technical challenges at any point in the energy supply value chain limit the electricity supply to the end consumer.
2. Causes of recent power outages The main cause of the failure is the ongoing construction of the Pokuase Interchange, which required the diversion of GRIDCo's 330 kV transmission towers from Tema to Aboadze in the surrounding area. This requires disabling the entire line to perform the deviation. The effects of the ongoing construction at Pokuase and related diversion work are as follows: a. Triggering Existing Transmission Lines: Following the failure of the 330 kV line, Aboadze did not transmit electricity to Accra, that is, from west to east. Instead, Akosombo energy was transferred to Mallam, Winneba and Cape Coast to the western part of the country via the 161-kV transmission line.
These 161 kV lines are overloaded, resulting in tripping, as a protective measure, in order to avoid any major damage to the equipment. It is important to note, however, that transmission lines across the country are interconnected to the extent that disruption of one transmission line has a driving effect on others. b. Triggering Generator Sets: Power plants are designed to shut down automatically if there is a problem during power transmission, as indicated in (a) above. This is a protective measure to prevent electricity from returning to generators. It has therefore become necessary to temporarily relocate and limit the flow of energy across the coastal corridor in order to facilitate the stability of the entire transport network while completing work on the hijacking of the line at Pokuase. This problem is therefore a pure operational and technical challenge at the stage of transmission; it has nothing to do with technical defects at the stage of production or distribution of the energy value chain. And then? ACEP's verifications reveal that the ongoing transfer of the GRIDCo 330 kV line to Pokuase is expected to be completed early next week. We hope that the transmission and distribution of electricity will return to normal.
recommendations
1. GRIDCo, as well as all electric utilities, must inform Ghanaians well in advance of system hiccups, in order to avoid the kind of confusion and public unrest that we are currently watching. This timely announcement will help consumers plan their lives and their businesses.
2. It is important that GRIDCo continue to invest in high capacity transmission lines in order to create enough redundancy to avoid overloading the transmission lines to the point of going off. To do this, GRIDCo must have a solid financial base. This means that PDS and NEDCO, as well as all players in the energy value chain, must bear the total cost of the electricity they use from their suppliers. In particular, the effectiveness of PDS and NEDCO is also needed to cope with technical and commercial losses throughout the distribution chain.
3. Distribution companies (PDS and NEDCO) should invest in a buffer infrastructure at the distribution level to maintain and smooth the supply of consumers in times of crisis along the upstream energy value chain .
Sign
Benjamin Boakye
Executive director
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