Ghanaians are paying for 4000 megawatts of power sitting idle, Energy Commission reveals

The Commission noted that the country is battling to trade the excess power because the price has been set high.

The excess power came as a result of power purchase agreements signed with independent power producers as a means to deal with the erratic power supply that hit the nation some 5 years ago.

A technical Regulation Officer at the Energy Commission, Dr Nii Darko Asante who made the revelation noted that currently there are over 4,000 megawatts of capacity not being used.

According to him, there’s no need for the excess power, because there’s no one to generate it for.

He said “our peak has been about 2,700 megawatts, that’s the highest number that we have had. We have almost 4,000 megawatts sitting there. There’s nothing you can do, it’s there, that’s why I said we should avoid this happening.”

He added that “We are exporting what we can export, we are trying to export more, but it’s not there. The demand is not there, our price is high too so it’s hard to sell it. So that’s the reality, that’s why we shouldn’t be doing this, and we should ever let it happen again.”

“But we should make sure that in saying that it should never happen again we shouldn’t go to the other extreme and become in shortage in 5 years to come,” he said.

He, however, noted that “it’s an expensive place to be, to have 1,000 megawatts and more than you are paying for and you are not using.”

The Energy Minister, John Peter Amewu told Parliament recently that the country pays $25million monthly for unused power.

This is because the Power Purchase Agreements (PPA) enjoin the state to pay for all megawatts produced whether they are consumed or not.

He, however, noted that to minimise the menace, the government is renegotiating with the PPA to bring the costs down to the barest minimum in the interim.

“We believe that the issue of take and pay must begin to trickle down to every Ghanaian. We will continue to make sure that the highly excessive regime of tariffs being imposed will no longer be witnessed by any Ghanaian,” he said.

Ghanaians are paying for 4000 megawatts of power sitting idle, Energy Commission reveals

Enhance Your Pulse News Experience!

JOIN OUR PULSE COMMUNITY!