By
Laudia Sawer
Tema, July 11, GNA – The Ghana Grid Company
(GRIDCo) is losing 280 million cedis due to the recent reduction in electricity
tariff by the Public Utility Regulatory Commission.
Mr Jonathan Amoako-Baah, Chief Executive
Officer of GRIDCo, who revealed this, said the revenue loss could affect the
effective operations of the Company.
Mr Amoako-Baah, said this on Wednesday during
a media encounter in Tema as part of activities to mark the company’s 10 years
in operations.
He explained that the amount could be used for
operation and maintenance issues, payment of compensation, servicing of loans,
among others.
“Even though the tariff reduction is
significant for customers, it is having a negative effect on our operations”,
he stated.
He therefore appealed to the Public Utility
Regulatory Commission (PURC) to bring the company back to where its revenue
was.
The GRIDCo CEO added that “if PURC is not
increasing our Transmission Service Charges, they should at least bring us back
to where we were to let us work efficiently”.
He added that monies owed them by companies
including the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) was also negatively affecting
their operations.
According to him, they had written letters to
those companies informing them to regularize or face disconnection.
He however stated that even though ECG
consumes about 70 per cent of the power generated and owes GRIDCo 900 million
cedis, disconnecting it from the national grid was not an option as it would
affect customers’ consumption.
The company, he said, had registered and
obtained a license to operate the Ghana Grid Telecommunications Limited and
hoped it would be fully operational within the next two years.
Mr Mark Baah, Director Systems Operation, in a
presentation, stated that GRIDCo started operations on August 1, 2008 after it
was separated from the Volta River Authority (VRA) with the intention to
develop and promote competition in Ghana’s wholesale power market.
Mr Baah added that it inherited 43
substations, and about 4,000km of transmission lines from VRA and now had 68 in
number, with more than 5,000km of transmission lines.
He added that it currently used more modern
grid through general improvements like installation of SVC and capacitor banks,
national system control centre, and fibre capacity.
As part of the anniversary staff of the
company would embark on Gridwalk from Aye-Mensah in the Greater Accra Region to
the Aburi gardens in the Eastern Region on July 21, blood donation exercise and
a durbar.
Some students from selected schools in the
Tema and Accra Metropolis also participated in an open day were officials of
the company took them through its operations.
GNA