General News of Thursday, 5 February 2015
Source: citifmonline.com
Ghana is expected to buy close to 80 megawatts of power from Ivory Coast to guarantee stable supply of power for football fans to enjoy the Black Stars semi-final game against Equatorial Guinea today [Thursday].
This was confirmed by the Chief Executive of the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDco), Engineer William Amuna.
Ghana is struggling to meet the growing demand for electricity leading to a massive load shedding exercise across the country.
It is unclear how much Ghana is paying for the power it is receiving from Ivory Coast for today’s game.
Speaking at a stakeholder meeting on the energy sector organized by the Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC), Engineer William Amuna said, “hydrology for the Volta lake you know is not good, it is not only for us, it happened to La Côte d’Ivoire. ”
“We’ve actually been trying to talk to La Côte d’Ivoire to provide power, it’s not been easy with them too, but the good thing is that anytime we have our football matches, they give us between 50 and 80 megawatts. Anytime anybody is in Cote d’Ivoire just say thank you to them but of cause we are going to pay for it,” he added.
Meanwhile, government has confirmed there will be financial closure of the contracts to bring power badges to ease the current load shedding exercise next week.
The ministry of power earlier announced emergency plans to acquire two emergency power plants costing over 250 million dollars.
Civil society group, Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) has questioned government’s capacity to raise the money because it was not captured in the 2015 budget.
But the minister of power, Dr. Kwabena Donkor says some infrastructure would be installed at the Tema harbor to help evacuate power when the badges arrive in April.
“Latest sometime next week there will be financial closure that will enable the process of getting the badges into the country to begin; some work will have to be done in Ghana to enable evacuation of power when the first Badge anchors at Tema Fishing Harbor and once we have financial closure those works will start,” he assured.