‘Dumsor’ is not back – Energy Minister

Mr John Peter Amewu, the Minister of Energy, has assured the public that the country is not back to ‘Dumsor’ and that areas within Accra experiencing power outages will soon heave a sigh of relief.

He said industry players are working to address the challenges and measures are underway to offload some power of the affected areas, which include the Central Business District (CBD) from its substation to that of the Achimota Substation to ameliorate the situation.

Addressing journalists at the end of a visit to some power stations, including the CBD, Pokuase substations and the Sunon Asogli Power Plant, Mr Amewu said that the power outage is not as a result of low power generation as being rumoured.

“Dumsor is not back. We have enough power to supply our cherished customers. People should rest assured the recent challenge is as a result of upgrade works aimed at ensuring stable supply of power,” he said.

“We will confront the problem and address it, people can peddle falsehood but the Government is focused on delivering sustainable power supply as a crucial part of the industrialization agenda.”

Mr Jonathan Amoako-Baah, the Ghana Grid Company Limited, explained that to make way for the Pokuase Interchange project, the length of the transmission pylons on that stretch has to be raised further up.

“To complete the work we channeled all the transmission power through the Central Business District grid and because the load was too high on it, it tripped,” he said.

“We have a new state-of-the-art system at CBD station, which even has a cooling system that prevents fire so we did not envisage such a problem but we are working to address it”.

He said due to the power trigger, the generation plant experienced high frequency, which resulted in three of them going off.

“This affected supply at other places outside Accra including Takoradi and its environs,” he said.

At the Sunon Asogli Power Plant, Mr Li Xiaohai, the Chairman, told the Minister that at 1900 hours on Tuesday, the day the outage occurred, the plant’s normal frequency of 50 increased to 55 and, as a result, it automatically went off.

“It has not affected the plant and it’s power generation in any way. The plant is designed in such a way that if it experiences any challenge like what happened, it goes off automatically to protect it,” he added.

He gave the assurance that the Plant is sound and ready to produce power once the transmission lines are ready to off take.

Source: GNA

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