GRIDCo, Uganda to develop cooperation

The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) has agreed to cooperate with Uganda to develop the technical competence in the management of that country’s power transmission network to enable it to deliver sustainable and reliable power to its citizens.

Uganda has reached out to GRIDCo to seek an insight into the progress made over the years in the power transmission business to enable it to benchmark its operations in the areas of commercialisation of communication assets, particularly optic fibre and other data products.

An eight-member delegation from that country led by the Chairman of the Ugandan Electricity Transmission Company Limited (UETCL), Kwame Ejalu Ejuku, will for the next three days hold discussions with GRIDCo and other power sector players on project implementation in the face of challenges, capacity building among others.

GRIDCo, on the other hand, is expected to enhance the technical capacity of the visiting team by sharing knowledge and best practices on transmission infrastructure, operations, mitigating vandalism on grid towers among other technical expertise that will be relevant to the delegation.

Development

At a meeting with the team, the Board Chairman of GRIDCo, Kabral Blay Amihere, said the acceptance of technology as a key driver of economic growth allowing for efficiency in the production of goods and services was an indication that power was what Africa was using to scale up its development.

Mr Amihere pointed out that GRIDCo, building on its infrastructure and technical expertise over the years, had allowed the company to be in a strategic position to export power to neighbouring countries such as Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Togo and Benin.

The leader of the delegation, Mr Ejuku in his remarks indicated that UETCL was rolling out a number of projects to double that country’s transmission grid in the next three years, hence their interest to benchmark GRIDCo’s success in the various areas.

“The UETCL board is aware of the maturity of GRIDCo and its successes with regard to the extent of coverage, as well as management of its telecom assets through Gridtel and we are interested to learn about the commercialisation and other relevant operational areas that will benefit our country,” Mr Ejuku said.

The Chief Executive Officer of UETCL, Michael Taremwa, in a remark said the company currently had a circuit length of 3.385 kilometres made up of 1,002 kilometres of 220 kilovolt lines.

The company, he said, purchased power from 41 generators and sold to six distributors, thus requiring the need for them to have a robust network that demanded visibility through the control centre, as well as a reliable grid to evacuate power from generators, “given that demand for power is at distances far away from the generation point,” he said.

A situation, he said had seen transmission loss standing between 4.2 and 4.5 per cent, posing a danger to their operations.
GRIDCo

The Chief Executive of GRIDCo, Ebenezer Essienyi, in his welcome remarks expressed delight at the visit by the Ugandans.

He said the future depended on how the company positioned itself to meet the ever-growing power needs of Ghanaians, bulk customers and sub-regional obligations.