Power generation faces more challenges — GRIDCo boss
Ghana’s power generation will face imminent challenges in a couple of weeks, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo), Mr William Amuna, has said.
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That is because the Floating, Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) Kwame Nkrumah vessel has been shut down for maintenance works and there has been a further drop in gas flow from the West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) Limited.
Furthermore, the water level in the Akosombo Dam has reduced below the minimum operating level, prompting authorities to shut down three of the turbines to save the dam.
The FPSO Kwame Nkrumah was shut down for mandatory inspection and maintenance works, while gas flow from the WAPCo has reduced from the contracted volume of 120 million standard cubic feet (mmscf) to 6mmscf.
The shutdown
Mr Amuna, who doubles as the Chairman of the Load Management Committee, in an interview, told the Daily Graphic such development would cause intermittent interruptions in electricity supply.
He explained that the maintenance works on the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah were expected to be completed by the end of March. Consequently, gas flow from the Atuabo gas processing plant to the Aboadze thermal enclave in Tarkoradi in the Western Region had been curtailed.
However, Mr Amuna stated that the maintenance works had been rescheduled for completion by the end of April, 2016.
As a result of the shutdown, the dual thermal plant in the Aboadze enclave had to be converted to run on light crude oil to resolve the challenge.
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Technical hitch
That, Mr Amuna said, had also caused a technical hitch on the TAPCO plant as the process was ongoing.
Meanwhile, the AMERI plant within the Aboadze enclave, which generates 250MW and runs solely on gas, would not be working until the completion of the maintenance works.
Additionally, he said gas supply from Nigeria, which powers the Tema power enclave, had reduced drastically to about 6 mmscf instead of 120mmscf following vandalisation on some gas pipelines in Nigeria.
He conceded that the development had reduced the generation capacity of the plants in the Tema enclave even though some of them were running on light crude oil and heavy fuel oil.
“The above development has led to the inability to generate and evacuate power from about 1000MW of installed generation capacity which run on natural gas,” he said.
According to Mr Amuna, the situation has been compounded by the low levels of the water in the Akosombo Dam.
Low levels of water
Currently, he said the Akosombo Dam was operating on only three out of six turbines due to the drop in the water level below its minimum level, generating about 400MW.
He further explained that the shutdown had become necessary to save the integrity of the dam.
However, the Chief Executive was optimistic that one unit of the TAPCO would come on stream tomorrow.
While apologising to consumers for the interruptions in electricity supply, Mr Amuna indicated that the situation was temporary and engineers from the utility companies would continue to work to keep the interruptions to the barest minimum.