Napo Claims ‘Dumsor’ Is Not Back Despite The Recent Power Outage

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The Minister of Energy, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, has appealed to Ghanaians to stay calm as steps are taken to deal with the intermittent power outages being experienced in some parts of the country.

According to him, there was no way the govt would allow the country to slide back to the prolonged period of power outages between 2012 and 2016 which became referred to as “dumsor“.

“We are working feverishly to resolve the challenges which have arisen as a result of technical difficulties with our transmission lines and it’s our hope that issue is going to be resolved by the top of the year,” Dr. Prempeh made on Tuesday (6 April) when he paid a day’s working visit to the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo).

The visit was to afford him first hand information on the scope of labor currently being undertaken to deal with the facility challenges.

Dr Prempeh said what was happening had nothing to try to to with financial challenges as being speculated but rather purely technical.

Old transmission lines
He explained that the majority of the transmission lines currently transporting electricity to the varied substations were installed around 1950 and 60 and had not witnessed any remarkable improvement.
“These the lines that we’ve just been informed about were strung within the 50s and a few within the 60s. the facility it had been alleged to transmit to Accra has increased tremendously thanks to the expansion of Accra yet the lines have remained an equivalent. they’re now giving us lines which will improve the facility situation in Accra,” he said.

Dr. Prempeh said what was required now was the forbearance of the Ghanaian because what was being planned and implemented would better improve things for all.

“We should all be sincere and truthful in our communication. In 2016, the entire country was given periods once we are to receive power and when to be off. In 2016, the govt of the day told us it had been a generation problem. Even the opposition then said the govt didn’t have money to shop for fuel to power the generators. this is often not a generation problem, this is often not about fuel so how can we call it “Dumsor”?” he queried.

He said the government had included within the allow this year the supply to enhance on the electricity supply systems and it had been getting to continue until the entire country’s system improves.

The Director of Engineers Project at GRIDCo, Owusu Afriyie, said the location for the Volta-Achimota-Transmission upgrade was constructed in 1965 and had not seen any upgrade since.

He said the corporate was currently upgrading it to make sure that it’s ready to transfer more load to Accra.

Increase in capacity Afriyie explained that when completed, the lines would increase their load capacity by about three fold from the present 420mega watts to about 1200mega watts.

He noted that the project had commenced from the Volta substation which was one among GRIDCo’s Bulk Supply Point in Tema to Achimota, a distance of about 27kilometres.
“By the completion of this project, we’ll have more power to the Achimota substation transferred from the Volta substation to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to distribute,” he said.