The Ministry says the expected load shedding may result from their decision to rest some hydro plants, which will reduce the power generation capacity.
This new information somehow defeats President John Mahama’s message to Parliament in his state of the nation address that his government had overcome the four-year old crisis following a fairly stable power supply since January this year.
The Deputy Minister for Power, John Jinapor who was speaking on Citi Breakfast Show, said his Ministry had not been shedding power for the past three weeks as some sections of the public have alleged, but revealed the ministry’s intention to rest some of the hydro plants.
Mr. Jinapor said, his outfit was not aware of the exact impact of their decision to rest some of the hydro plants but explained that this course of action is being taken to ultimately protect the hydro plants.
According to him, “We are going to have technical meeting and we will take it from there. The exact impact I am unable to tell now until we finish that meeting; but clearly we must protect the integrity of the hydro dam. You can run them for a period of time but you can’t risk running all of them beyond a certain period.”
He explained the likelihood of a deficit in Ghana’s power generation, saying that “In the next few weeks, it is a tight situation for us and we can have some deficit. It is very likely we will have deficit… it’s likely.”
“As tough as the decision may be, if it is the right decision, we won’t hesitate to take the right decision… I prefer to rest the dams and some of the turbines for the next two weeks than to risk running them for the next two weeks for whatever expediency and then have a major problem ahead. I think that we should also think long-term and so we will take the right decision. We wouldn’t compromise the integrity of the dam,” he added.
Ghana, he said, had all the infrastructure in place to ensure the power situation was a thing of the past and that until “we control our fuel, until we bring all those Gas fields or at least those that can fire the thermal plants on, we still have a challenge.”
Source: Newsghana.com.gh
