Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, Energy Minister
The Minister of Energy, Matthew Opoku Prempeh, has said that the government is doing a lot in the power sector, especially on the distribution side.
He said Ghana had increased its share of renewable energy in the generation mix of the country.
Addressing journalists at the Minister’s Briefing organised by the Information Ministry yesterday in Accra, Dr. Opoku Prempeh explained that the share of solar in the mix had increased to 3.2 percent of the percentage target of generation by 2030.
In addition, he said, there are ongoing utility scale solar projects currently ongoing with 100MW solar Photovoltaic (PV) under construction at Bui while the four Mega Watt floating Solar PV on the Bui Reservoir is completed.
This brings the total floating PV to five megawatts, making it the biggest in Africa, while the 15MW solar PV phasII at Kaleo has been completed.
Challenges
The Minister also explained that the challenges confronting the power transmission sector, which include congested networks, overaged infrastructure, and right-of-way encroachment, were all being addressed.
He said a number of work, including the 161Kilo Volt (KV) Volta-Achimota Mallan Transmission line upgrade, in addition to the Kumasi-Kintampo section of the 330 Kumasi-Bolgatanga transmission line project, had been completed.
He said feasibility studies had been completed for the third Bulk Supply Point (BSP) in Kumasi, the Dunkwa 330KV substation, and the Static Var Compensation at Ahodwo substation.
Dr. Opoku Prempeh referred to the losses incurred by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) which caused it to embark on aggressive reforms such as the introduction of some measures to improve its efficiency in revenue mobilisation.
The ECG recorded an increase in its losses in the first nine months of 2023. The company recorded a total of GHC2, 050,373,143.47 as collection losses as of September 2023.
Collection loss is the income that is not received due to non-payment, delinquency, or bad debt from tenants or customers. The amount is against a total of GH¢2, 448,770,084.34 loss recorded by the company in the year 2022.
For system losses, he said, the ECG had recorded GHC4,038,241,812.63 loss as of September 2023 as against an amount of GHC2,599,695,242.10 in 2022.
Mr Prempeh also said the company made technical losses of GHC1,279,369,021.42 as of September 2023 as against GHC2,758,872,792.21 in 2022.
Regarding commercial losses, the Energy Minister indicated that the ECG lost GHC2,758,872,791.21 as against GHC1,852,597,985.96 recorded in 2022.
Bouncing back
He said the ECG had started the implementation of boundary metering and distribution transformer metering.
Already, boundary meters for nine operational regions and nine districts had been completed with 88 districts at various stages of completion, adding that about 16,000 distribution transformer had been surveyed and the metering would commence next year.
