The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has come under criticism from the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) for providing explanations that were deemed "not factually accurate" regarding the recent spate of erratic power outages experienced by consumers.
ECG attributed the power supply disruptions to overloaded transformers, citing as many as 630 instances. Additionally, it pointed fingers at the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), accusing it of making sudden and unplanned demands to cut supply, thus preventing the provision of a load management timetable to inform consumers about expected power availability.
However, the PURC, in its report on the outages attributed by ECG to the alleged 630 overloaded transformers during peak hours, stated that its analysis of the data provided by ECG did not support this claim.
According to the PURC, out of 715 transformer details submitted, only 31 were loaded less than 70%, while 595 were loaded between 70-100%, and 89 were loaded above 100%. Further analysis compared the data submitted by ECG with the total outage data for the period January to March 18, 2024. It was found that out of 647 outage incidents occurring between 7 pm and 11 pm, only 3 were planned outages related to transformers. The majority of outages during this time were attributed to load management operations by GRIDCo and faults unrelated to overloaded transformers.
The PURC concluded that ECG's attribution of the outages between 7 pm and 11 pm to transformer overload was therefore inaccurate and not supported by the evidence. The commission stated that it is already investigating the root causes of these outages.
In a related development, board members of ECG who served from January 1st to March 18th, 2024, are to pay a regulatory charge of approximately GHȼ5.9 million for overseeing power outages without providing prior notification to consumers during this period. Among those affected are ECG MD Samuel Mahama Dubik and eight others. The current Deputy Energy Minister, Herbert Krapah, who chairs the board, will not be impacted as his tenure falls outside the period covered by the regulatory orders. Former board chairman Keli Gadzekpo, who resigned three weeks ago, will also be subject to this fine, along with Chief Whip Frank Annor Dompreh and five other individuals.