Power failure caused by tripping—Amuna
Power supply to parts of the country has been restored after the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) suffered system failure of its transmission lines yesterday morning.
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Nearly the whole country was plunged into darkness following the failure of some of GRIDCo’s transmission lines.
Power was gradually restored by engineers of the company who worked fast to fix the problem.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Chief Executive Officer of GRIDCo, Mr William Amuna, said as of 1 p.m. yesterday, power supply had been restored to Accra and Tema.
Explaining the incident, Mr Amuna said the transmission lines between Akosombo and Tema tripped, which resulted in the systems collapse of the transmission lines, causing the loss of 40-50 per cent of power generation.
He said apart from the western part of the country, including Takoradi, Tarkwa and Dunkwa, almost all the regions were affected by the blackout.
Situation being analysed
As of the time of going to press yesterday, Mr Amuna said power had been restored to almost all the areas affected by the power outage.
The last time such an incident occurred was in 2010.
He indicated that the company was working assiduously to investigate and analyse the situation to find out the exact cause of the disruptions.
He said the incident had nothing to do with the energy crisis, saying it was solely a technical problem.
The country had, over the past three years, endured intensive power crisis which resulted in businesses cutting down production, folding up or laying off workers, a development that further worsened the already precarious unemployment situation in Ghana.
Businesses which survived the hardship have had to look for alternative sources of energy at high prices, largely rendering most of them uncompetitive and unprofitable.
However, Mr Amuna said “we have more than enough power and much more to distribute to consumers. What happened was a transmission line fault”.
Public experience
The sudden break in power threw the country into a state of anxiety and anguish, as everybody wondered what was happening.
When asked how they felt about the blackout, some members of the public said they were taken by surprise, while others said they thought it was the load shedding which had started again.
Mr Kweku Owusu, a businessman, said: “I was scared it was going to damage my electrical appliances or even cause fire because it was just going on and off before it finally went off.”
Another member of the public, Ms Esther Ennin, a banker, said: “I do not know what it was about but whatever it was, it destroyed my refrigerator guard. I was lucky because it could have destroyed my refrigerator.”
Mr Frank Addison, a driver, indicated that it took him by surprise because for some time now he had power all day and all night.
“It was later that I heard the news that it was a problem. I hope we are not going back to ‘dumsor’ again,” he added.
A student, Ms Anastasia Adjei, also told the Daily Graphic that she was ironing her school uniform when the incident happened.
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