Electricity in Ghana2016

This is election year in Ghana, and electricity supply is at probably 35%.

To start with, I am not affiliated with any political party in Ghana, so as we say in the good old USA l am going to tell it like it is.

I have been designing electrical apparatus for more than thirty years now. I first start with the then giant of the time Westinghouse Electric, worked for Ford Motor Co., Barber-Colman Aircraft Products, General Electric, Johnson Electric, and Caterpillar Diversified Products; all in the USA.

I have a blog site called Electricity Africa; where I predicted my suspicion about any and all possible things that are wrong with power generating equipment in Ghana. Well, my suspicions are being confirmed. Akosombo is producing at 400MW and not 1050MW per the original design; I do not buy the flimsy excuses about water level. What happened to the old saying "make hay while the sun shines", is Volta Lake being dredged at least once a year? I know it is very expensive, and I will say it again very expensive, but there should be a seventh generator on standby since the power generation is marginal at best.

Let's talk about what all the options as are;

(1).  Solar

(2).  Wind mill

(3).  Hydro

(4).   Landfill

(5).  Diesel

(6).  Others

I am writing this piece on Tuesday July 26, 2016, and there is NO sun in the skies over Accra, so if you have a (1) solar panel, as we say in the US, you are up the creek with a broken paddle. Solar power requires a whole bank of storage cells or batteries to store the power as DC and later to be converted back to AC for use.

Let skip and go to (3) hydro, with the "Global Warming" as we are going through, it seems like it is raining where the water is not needed, and is not raining where it is needed. I strongly believe at least 2 generators are kaput.

Let's go to (5) and look at oil, can anybody look in his or her crystal ball and tell me oil would be here forever? Oil would run out, then what?

Now let's go back to (2)  that I skipped, wind mill or wind-farm. The wind is here to stay with us, we breath it, our plants breath it, our fires need wind. A windmill turning 10 miles an hour WILL generate electricity, the higher the wind speed the more electricity generated. In Ghana, every point along the coast has wind, so you say what about places away from the coast, well, you have mountains like Aburi, Afadjato to name a few.

Finally let's look at trash, garbage, waste or whatever you choose to call it, from the smallest enclave ( village) of two people to a city of millions, waste is produce by humans, there are generator sets or gensets purposely designed and manufactured to run on the gases that come out of landfills without any purification and producing more than 1 MW of power.

When will those in power start thinking about the future and the next generations instead of me, me, me, or shall I say I, i, i?

Folks, welcome to the land of bribery and corruption, you do NOT have to look too far to see the hippos running wild in this environment. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, IT IS A DUCK.

 

     SK Simmonds

Adanfo Pa Group

sks1018@yahoo.com