STORY: Kwame Asiedu Marfo & Moses Dotsey Aklorbortu, Aboadze.
THE VICE President, John Dramani Mahama has cut a sod for the commencement of the expansion of the Takoradi Thermal Power Plant at Aboadze in the Shama District of the Western Region.
The 132Mega Watts (MW) capacity Combined Cycle Plant will consists of four Gas Turbines, four Heat Recovery Steam Generators and two Steam Turbines.
The Gas Turbines will run on light oil, diesel oil and natural gas.
The project is being financed with a loan from the Canadian Government, the Societe General of Canada and the Investment Bank at the cost of US$ 185,358,651.00, with the main contractors for the project being the Canadian Commercial Corporation.
With regard to power generation, Ghana’s power supply sources are mainly from hydro-electricity, thermal from light crude oil and a small percentage of photo-voltaic solar.
At present, the power system has an installed generation capacity of about 2,000 MW, with the Akosombo Dam generating 1,020 MW, while the Kpong Dam is producing 160 MW.
Concerning thermal power generation, TAPCO (VRA) is producing 330 MW, TAQA 220 MW, the Mines Reserve Plant 80 MW and the Tema Thermal Power Plant 126 MW, while the Emergency Power Plants is generating 126 MW.
Currently, the country’s peak demand of power is about 1,350 MW.
Speaking at the ground breaking ceremony for the project to start, the Vice President, Mr John Dramani Mahama said the government had committed itself to increasing the current installed power generation capacity of about 2,000 MW to 5,000 MW by 2015.
This, he explained was to make electrical energy available for industrial as well as domestic use.
“The vision of the energy sector is to provide adequate and reliable energy supplies to all sectors of the economy to support socio-economic development, poverty reduction and also for export”, he added.
Mr Mahama said part of the vision of the power sector of the country was to become a net exporter of power, and that to achieve these objectives, the government was undertaking the construction of some power plants.
Notably among them, he said was the Bui Hydro-electric Power Project that sought to add 400 MW capacity to the existing power generation capacity in the country.
The Vice President said beside the Bui Project, the government would develop smaller hydro-power plants on the River Oti, which was expected to produce 90 MW of electricity, and also at Heman to produce 95 MW as well as Awisam to generate about 50 MW of power.
He said the Brazilian Government had also provided a loan of US$ 250 million for the construction of the Juale Plant.
Mr John Mahama said the government would continue the National Electrification Programme which was started in 1990, when about 478 communities were connected to the national electrification grid.
Since then, he said about 4,000 communities had been connected to the grid.
For his part the Deputy Minister for Energy, Dr Kwabena Donkor said the gravity of the country’s power sector generation challenge was aggravated by the use of obsolesce transmission and distribution infrastructure.
“It is sad to note that transformers, and its associated equipment manufactured and installed in the early 1960s still form the backbone of our transmission and distribution infrastructure. As a nation, we have collectively underinvested in the power sector after 1960s”, he said.
He said the government was aware that driving an energy-based economy would require an effective management of the power system and the fullest support of the citizenry to ensure adequate, reliable and cost-effective power supply.
He said the government was aware of the difficulties in the chain of distribution and acknowledged its responsibilities in that direction., and that to ensure a buoyant economy, adequate energy supply to commerce and industry was a must.
Dr Donkor said the government would support GRICO and ECG to improve their status quo as the transmission system presently was undergoing reinforcement to improve on reliability and reduce vulnerability of the network.
He said it would also support the expansion capacity of network which would carry load growth and modernize the entire transmission system to meet internationally accepted standards.
The minister said, in returning to international standards of excellence in service delivery, “We would have to collectively confront the high commercial losses experienced in the distribution chain.”
He said while there was an increase in investment would significantly reduce technical losses, the theft of power through illegal connections culminating in commercial losses must be addressed.
“We therefore call on security agencies, community, groups and patriotic minded individuals to help ECG, VRA (NED) to bring this under control by arresting and reporting the perpetrators who live in our communities to the authorities,” he said.
He said it would interest the public to note that, such commercial losses add to the individual bills as consumers, therefore it was in the interest of the public to help arrest the situation by reporting people.
The Canadian High Commissioner to Ghana, Mr Darren Schemmer said Ghana and Canada had been partners in development more than centuries ago.
He said Canada used its natural resources as a springboard to development just as Ghana had started doing today saying “We expect to see more collaboration between the two countries in the years ahead”.
The Western Region, he noted with the recent oil find development was most likely to accelerate in the region with its positive ripple effect on the Central Region.
The Western Regional Minister, Mr Paul Evans Aidoo called for attention in the area of job for the youth from the region when the contractors for the project was mobilizing its work force.
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