Time to turn to solar energy

Last January, Ghanaians heaved a sigh of relief when the Power Ministry announced that the nearly four years of load-shedding had come to an end.

During the period of load-shedding, otherwise known as dumsor, businesses and domestic activities were brought on their knees.

Those who had the means were able to acquire generating sets to power their homes and businesses, albeit at extra cost.

Small-scale businesses and even big companies and some individuals who could not afford the extra cost of power had to close down their operations or sleep in darkness during the period of dumsor.

The prayer of business operators and individuals who bore the brunt of the power crisis was that the government should be able to fix the crisis, although power politics was also in full gear.

Some sceptics did not give President Mahama a dog’s chance to fix the crisis when he pledged in his State of the Nation Address in 2015 that he would fix the power problem, unlike attempts to manage it in the past.

For almost a generation or more now the country has been experiencing one form of power challenge or another, always disrupting attempts at nation building

Power and, indeed, reliable, accessible and cheap electricity, is key to any nation’s development plans and programmes.

The social and economic effects of the power crisis are quite unprecedented and that explains why the government and all stakeholders should resolve never to traverse that road again.

It is with this in mind that Ghanaians began worrying again when the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) Limited hinted of an imminent power challenge in a couple of weeks.

This latest challenge has been attributed to the shutdown of the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah for maintenance works and a further drop in gas flow from the West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) Limited.

We are also told that the water level in the Akosombo Dam has reduced below the minimum operating level, prompting the authorities to shut down three of the turbines to save the dam.

Regrettably, we have gone down this same lane before, especially during the almost four years of dumsor when the shutdown of the Akosombo Dam, inadequate gas from WAPCo and the shutdown of the FPSO were all familiar tunes.

We know that even though we have redundancies on all our power plants put together, anytime there is a technical challenge we are back to the dark days of dumsor.

Although the government is doing its best to provide the country with reliable power, the Daily Graphic thinks the solution to our challenge lies in a focus on solar energy.

When hydropower became unreliable because of the erratic rainfall pattern, it was felt that thermal was the saviour. But, alas, the high cost of crude oil and insufficient gas supply have exposed the weakness in that generation mix.

The Daily Graphic thinks that it is about time we turned to renewable energy, particularly solar, because of the availability of the sun for such a venture. National conversation on this subject shows that almost everybody agrees that it is the way to go, except that it is felt that the initial investment is, to say the least, prohibitive.

The Daily Graphic, however, thinks that the long-term resolution to the country’s power crisis lies in massive investment in solar energy.