Boakye Agyarko speaking at the policy summit
The Minister Of Energy, Emmanuel Boakye Agyarko has revealed that 21 percent of power supply to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) is lost.
This, according to him translates into GH¢1.260 billion loss in the country’s revenue.
Speaking at the second day of a National Policy Summit held in Accra yesterday, Mr. Agyarko called for the need to fix the power losses in the supply chain immediately.
He said “21 percent of power supply to ECG is lost and every percent of power loss is equivalent to GH¢60 million. I am not saying that ECG should not lose power at all…technical losses, you can’t do anything about it but to lose 21 percent of what you are given to sell, makes you unprofitable. We need to fix that”.
Explaining some of the causes of the power loss, he said because of overloads and lack of redundancy, the power that is loaded by the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) and VRA onto the national grid suffers significant losses.
“We need to reduce transmission losses in order to make sure that more power becomes available to our citizens. We also need to ensure and preserve the financial health of the transmission utilities. This opens up tremendous opportunities for investments in the transmission system”, Mr. Agyarko said.
Fixing the problem
Outlining part of the innovations to fix the problem, he said there is the need to fix the balance sheets of the distribution entities, GRIDco, NEDco and ECG, adding that Government’s goal is to improve electricity distribution network and operations and to reduce system loses and improve the quality of electricity supply.
“We will seek to prioritize and implement critical transmission infrastructure to ensure efficient power transfer from generation plants to load centers”, Mr. Agyarko said.
Strengthening National Grid
The Minister also said the country’s national grid has critical weaknesses in the system which need to be strengthened.
“Our aim is to coordinate the development of power and gas sub-sector lines in an integrated plan. We are therefore developing a power sector master plan that will ensure that all the issues in the power sector are properly aligned.
“The policy goal is to attain and maintain adequate generation reserves and margins. That means we have to complete the power generation projects currently under construction; progressively reduce the role of government in guaranteeing power sector capital projects and work toward eliminating this in the shortest possible time; explore and develop clean coal technology and nuclear power generation options to diversify our energy generation mix and to ensure low cost of power supply in the long term”, he said.
By Cephas Larbi