By Nicholas Osei-Wusu
Engineers of both GRIDCo and the Electricity Company of Ghana, ECG are working assiduously to restore power supply to Obuasi and it’s environs a day after one of the transformers at the Obuasi Sub Station of GRIDCo exploded.
Management of the two organizations have appealed for calm among residents within the Obuasi Municipality and New Edubiase as every effort is being made to ensure at least partial restoration of power while strenuous work is ongoing to address the problem caused permanently within the shortest possible time.
According to engineers of GRDICo, the Obuasi Sub Station located at Obuasi caught fire leading to an explosion at about 9pm on Wednesday May 21, 2025. This caused a sudden power outage within the service area.
The Sub Station provides electricity to the entire Obuasi area extending as far as to New Edubiase in the Adansi South district of the Ashanti region.
The situation ruffled feathers of electricity consumers, who reports indicate, have not been satisfied with the power supply situation in the past two months.
A visit to the Sub Station showed that human and material resources had been commandeered to urgently attend to the problem.
The Kumasi Area Manager of GRIDCo, Engineer Peter Aquah, explained to the new Municipal Chief Executive for Obuasi, Madam Faustilove Appiah-Kanin, that the explosion, which was detected at one of the Feeders, has caused extensive damage to some of the transformers as well as the Control Room at the Sub Station requiring a shutdown immediately.
He disclosed, “because we didn’t know the extent of damage, it was advised to shut down the whole Substation and then look through the issues one after the other so that we can isolate where’s faulty and work on it. So we did that throughout last night and we found out that a lot of damage has happened inside the control room. All these transformers and the feeders we talked about have relays that monitor them inside the Control room and the fire burned through the cables into the control room leaving black soot everywhere.”
Engineer Peter Aquah assured that, in the interim, partial power would be restored to ease the discomfort customers may be enduring.
“From the initial assessment we made, we’re looking at restoring transformer number one and two. But our target is, by the close of today. After we’re done with this, I’m sure we’ll be a bit more stable’, Ing. Aquah assured.
The new Municipal Chief Executive visited the ECG to know at first hand what the company is doing to address the power supply challenges.
The Obuasi District Manager of the ECG, Engineer Albert Agyabeng described the nature of the damage caused by the explosion as unprecedented, at least in the last two years, and appealed to ECG customers to bear with engineers as they work assiduously to restore power.
Ing. Agyabeng said, “unfortunately, one of the transformers is down. For now, Engineers are on site trying their best to restore power to parts of the district. The other part, they’ll do the necessary assessment and do their best to give them supply, but unfortunately, I cannot tell you when the other part would receive supply.”
The Obuasi West Municipal Chief Executive, Madam Faustilove Appiah-Kanin, expressed the frustration the people are going through in the last few months about the unstable power supply and urged both ECG and GRIDCo to deploy every available resource to address the situation.
“Energy crisis has been a problem for the Obuasi Municipality for about three months now and we’re here with the Electricity Company of Ghana, Obuasi and to express our grievances to them. I know after they’re done with the problem we had yesterday, they’re going to maintain power for us and Obuasi would be better”, she said.
One Response
Still now they haven’t restored power hmm