By Nicholas Osei-Wusu
The Ministry of Energy and Green Transition is setting up a command and control centre with all transformers connected to a central monitoring system under the supervision of the ministry to readily monitor every transformer to enable all the key stakeholders, including the sector minister closely monitor electricity distribution in the country.
The system will also help detect in real time, faulty transformers to ensure prompt solutions with the aim of cutting the time spent in tracing supply challenges.
The Minister, Dr. John Jinapor, who made this known in Kumasi during a meeting with staff of the ECG, said government is resourcing the ECG to perform optimally.
The Minister for Energy and Green Transition, Dr. John Jinapor made the announcement during a meeting with staff of the Electricity Company of Ghana, ECG in Kumasi.
The Minister said government believes in the competencies of Ghanaian engineers, including those working to sustain Ghana’s energy value chain, citing the ability of engineers of GRIDCo to fix the problem caused at Akonsombo last week within five days, instead of the projected six months to restore power supply to Ghana.
Dr. Jinapor said government is resourcing the ECG to enable it perform to optimally for regular power supply.
“We’re setting up a full command and control centre under the auspices of the Ministry of Energy, the Energy Commission and PURC. We’ve already set it up we’re just operationalizing it. We’ll put up a number-short code-, whatsapp, facebook, email, and I intend that we give all of you brand new phones, every District Manager. We’ll give you a dedicated number to attend to problems.”
“Even in advanced countries, they do have problems, but the first question what is the response time? Why should somebody go to the district office and for two days and nobody is coming? That two days there’s no power supply, you’re losing revenue, it’s not the energy alone”, Dr. Jinapor queried.
The Minister noted that, government will, however, not tolerate any acts of sabotage from anyone. Dr. Jinapor warned the workers to stay away from partisanship otherwise and focus on their professional jobs as engineers committed to their job responsibilities, and warned that government will not he is ready to let anyone hide behind politics to undermine power supply to Ghanaians.
The Acting Managing Director of the ECG, Julius Kpekpena, said the company’s team of engineers have been able to replace new and higher capacity transformers at the Ridge bulk supply station to address some of the causes of unstable power supply in the Ashanti region in recent times.
“We’re on course to complete some of the works we promised to complete in 6 months. Just yesterday, our Team completed the replacement of power transformers at Ridge. That one was planned for the end of May, but with the Minister’s support and encouragement, we started early and we’ve completed on schedule”, Mr. Kpekpena disclosed.
The Minister for Energy and Green Transition toured the Ridge bulk supply station to acquaint himself with the upgrading of the station with bigger capacity transformers.
