Tema ECG engineers, technicians upgrade skills
A five-day capacity building workshop for engineers and technicians of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) aimed at equipping them with added skills to make them improve on operations and maintenance of distribution systems has ended in Tema.
Advertisement
The programme, under the auspices of the Japanese International Co-operation Agency (JiCA), enriched the technical capacities of the participants in the areas of power systems and control, distribution plans and maintenance techniques for power equipment.
The participants would serve in a trainer-of-trainers capacity to provide technical support for their counterparts from Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Gambia.
The three countries, identified as lacking the requisite human resource in their power and energy sectors, often rely on the ECG for technical support.
Over 20 participants selected from ECG’s operational areas nationwide took part in the workshop. They underwent simulation exercises on correcting faults and analysing systems relays in the power distribution channel.
Addressing participants at the end of the workshop, the General Manager of the ECG Training Centre, Mr George Yaw Marfo, said due to the unique nature of services provided for consumers of electricity, it was paramount that engineers made system protection and control and maintenance techniques areas of priority.
Illegal Connections
He pointed out that illegal connection continued to be a problem for distribution of power and had become a major factor that caused frequent tripping in the distribution system.
According to him, while ECG was able to project voltage growth demands in rural communities and was able to make provisions to accommodate such as illegal connections growth in urban slums in particular continued to pose serious threats to the country’s power distribution system.
Other Trending Stories
“We are unable to totally disconnect slum communities as well as structures sited illegally but connected with power because in many instances you find some whose connections are genuine and legally made,” Mr Marfo pointed out.
System Audit
He hinted that while it was necessary for the ECG to periodically contract a system audit to be able to identify illegal connections, the company was unable to do so readily because of the minimal capacity of its supervisory controls and acquisition of data from its security system.
“In many instances we have had to rely on a manual way of auditing by visiting communities.But offenders often outwit officials by terminating illegal connections as soon as information is spread around of the presence of personnel from the ECG.
“Until we are able to totally automate our processes such that we are able to detect illegal connections as they are being constructed, incidents of power theft would continue to be with us,” Mr Marfo said.
JiCA
The Project Coordinator at JiCA, Mr Ritsuko Kawabe, reiterated that promoting improvement and modernisation in the power distribution system could drastically reduce the rate of loss of power from 25 per cent to 18 per cent.
“In order to achieve this, it becomes indispensable that the capabilities of electric power engineers and technicians were enhanced,” he said.
Mr Kawabe was hopeful that the three countries, which were secondary beneficiaries of the programme, would also begin to see an improvement in their power distribution networks.
Writer’s email: delarussel@gmail.com