The management of the Electricity Company Limited (ECG) has expressed worry about intermittent power supply currently being experienced in some parts of the Ashanti Region.
Businesses in the region are bearing the brunt of the outages in power supply with the utility company also suffering revenue losses.
According to the Managing Director of ECG, Kwame Agyeman Budu, the company after series of system investigations identified several causes of the unstable power supply including weak transformers, vegetation, broken and burnt electricity poles and third party damages.
Unauthorized power connections (illegal connections) which overload transformers to exceed its power control capacity contrary to ECG program power management for communities were also identified as a major course of un-programmed power outages, resulting in automatic power tripping in the system during peak hours.
The most affected areas of the automatic power tripping in the region include Piase, Mankranso, Manso Nkwanta, Abrankese, Kronom, Juansa, New Edubiase, Tutuka, Abodom, Abono, Atwimah Agogo, Apire, fomena, and Ntensere.
However, to preempt the development, the company have begun construction of new Power primary sub-station at Agogo which will link Agogo, Konongo, Juaso and Ejisu to provide stable power for consumers in the areas noted for experiencing intermittent power supply.
The project is estimated to cost the power distribution company GH¢15million to re-enforce the system.
In the medium term, the company is injecting in another GH¢29.5million to strengthen the existing networks in the region to ensure reliable and stable power supply for domestic and industrial use.
Addressing the Media in Kumasi on Friday, May 8, 2020, Mr. Agyeman Budu said, the exercise will replace all weak electrical cables, old and weak transformers, among other old machines used in the power distribution to ensure consumer satisfaction.
Touching on power theft, he urged Ghanaians to project the power they are consuming at a cost by reporting power thieves to either the police or ECG office as their illegal activities continue to create unstable power distribution.
“By our system assessment, we have realised that most of our transformers are overloaded because each transformer is programmed to pick specific load of power in every community for both domestic and industrial use. Therefore if you steal power through illegal connection, what it means is that you are overloading the transformer outside the programmed system at our blind side. Therefore when the transformers are overloaded, it causes automatic trip, resulting in unstable power distribution. Therefore, let us all do our part to protect the system for our collective good and benefit”, he pleaded.
He disclosed that ECG currently continues to struggle to identify electricity faults any time the light goes off unexpectedly due to the try and error approach.
This, he added, is as a result of lack of standard fault detector gadgets to locate the exact location where the fault is so far as underground cable fault is concerned despite having a test van.
“Currently we are trying to use a new system known as VIT which shows as the fault line without the entire line necessary experiencing power cut. So, as management of ECG we are doing our part to make sure our customers continue to enjoy stable power to increase our revenue generation daily”, he explained.
