Electricity in Ghana, July 2013

Electricity in Ghana, July 2013

Well, since I am still in Ghana and the information is readily available from the authorities, I might as well take advantage of the situation.

I had a face-to-face meeting with the most senior information officer at the Ministry of Energy, and here is what I was provided. I am putting it this way because, what is being generated and the demand, do NOT balance out.

There is currently a hydro dam under construction with three turbine generators, one came on-board in June 2013 (delivering 133MW), and another is suppose to come on-board July 2013 (delivering 133MW), with the last one coming on-board in September 2013 (to deliver 133MW). As of this writing, July 28, 2013; the July 2013 unit has not come on-board.

Anyway, with the one unit in June2013, the Grand Total being generated from hydro, thermal, and solar sources amount to a little more than 2478 Megawatts. And the daily demand as I was told is 1850MW, with 50MW of this figure going as export to Togo and Benin. If this is so, there should not be a blackout (and the authorities are calling it load shedding) of any kind because there is a net power output of more than 628MW on any given day. But there is blackout (or “dumso” in the local lingo) through July 2013.

If you are planning on doing any business in Ghana, and you think you will need electricity around the clock, my best advice is to have a Standby generator.

My personal observation and conclusion is that, there seem to be a little more of the cheetahs running around in Ghana than the Hippos, but still, there are hippos in this environment.