Minister of Energy and Green Transition, John Jinapor, has urged Ghanaians to remain patient following Thursday morning’s electricity disruption that affected parts of Accra and other areas nationwide.
The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) traced the disturbance to a fault on the Akosombo–Volta transmission line.
Speaking at the inauguration of a new office complex for the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), Dr Jinapor explained that the latest outage was tied to a temporary system introduced after Akosombo’s transmission infrastructure was severely impacted by an earlier incident.
He noted that government had faced two choices: either shut down the Akosombo plant for about six months to rebuild the control centre entirely, or adopt a temporary arrangement to keep the plant operational while permanent works progressed.
According to him, the latter option was chosen to avoid prolonged downtime. “As ministers had a decision to make and I decided that we should go by the temporal measure whilst we put in place a permanent solution.”
Dr Jinapor said engineers have since managed the temporary system, which has largely sustained supply in recent months. However, he cautioned that the arrangement remains susceptible to frequency disturbances, which can trigger Akosombo’s automatic shutdown to safeguard the wider grid.
“Because the temporal measure occasionally, when there’s some frequency disturbance, it takes off Akosombo immediately to protect the system.”
He assured that construction of a permanent control centre and related infrastructure is advancing and expected to conclude next month.
Appealing to consumers, he said: “I would appeal to the Ghanaians to bear with us. It hardly happens but once in a while when you have a major situation, sometimes even brand new cars you get some challenges here and there.”
Dr Jinapor acknowledged that Thursday’s outage caused interruptions in parts of Accra and beyond, lasting between one hour and ninety minutes. He stressed, however, that the temporary measure prevented a far longer disruption. “I can’t compare that to having six months of Akosombo perpetually down.”
He confirmed that power has largely been restored nationwide. “I’m only happy to note that despite the challenge we’ve had this morning, GRIDCo has largely restored power to almost all parts of the country.”
Remaining areas, he said, would be reconnected promptly. Expressing optimism, Dr Jinapor added: “I’m sure that by next month we’ll swing back to the original plan and we’ll have a much more resilient power supply situation.”
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