The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) will in the coming days come out with a timetable for a load-shedding exercise.
Areas to be affected and periods for the exercise are expected to be contained in the timetable.
Managing Director (MD) of ECG, Kwame Agyeman-Budu, disclosed this in Accra yesterday and explained that the exercise had become necessary because of a tie-in of the 330kv transmission lines from Aboadze in the Western Region to the new Bulk Supply Point under construction at Pokuase in the Ga West District of the Greater Accra Region.
He said besides some civil works, the exercise would require that some amount of load was taken off within the period the works would be undertaken.
Mr Agyeman-Budu said this in Accra yesterday when he accompanied the Minister of Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, on a working tour of the new Bulk Supply Point.
The visit was to offer the minister the opportunity to learn at first hand the extent of work being done on the 580-mega-watt facility, estimated at about $60million, being undertaken by Elecnor Construction of Spain and financed by the Millennium Development Authority (MIDA).
The MD noted that the amount of load to be taken off during the exercise would be about 100megawatts during peak demand and about 50during off-peak.
He said the schedule would be structured such that no area would go off for more than twelve hours in a day.
For his part, Dr Prempeh appealed to Ghanaians to bear with the situation as the works being undertaken would improve electricity supply in Accra and the country as a whole.
He said a lot of investment was currently going on to improve transmission and supply of power in the country, stressing that not much investment was done in the area of transmission and that was being fixed now.
Dr Prempeh noted that the planned outages would last within the period of the tie-in and not expected to go beyond it.
The project, he said, was scheduled to be completed by the end of August and that once completed, power supply to Accra would improve dramatically.
Conducting the team around the facility, the Technical Controller, MIDA, Mr William Amuna, said the facility was about 95 per cent completed.
He said major works left included the tie-in of the 330kv transmission lines from Aboadze in the Western Region to the facility and some civil works.
Mr Amuna explained that the tie-in, which is an important component of the project, was scheduled to start on May 10 and be completed by May 30.
He said once the facility was completed, it would take off some load from existing substation and free it to ensure efficient supply of power to areas in Accra and parts of the Eastern Region.
BY CLIFF EKUFUL
