An energy analyst, Dr. Yussif Sulemana, is urging the government to revive the country’s idle power plants to enhance the current energy generation mix. This, he explains, will mitigate the threat of unannounced intermittent power supply across the country.
His comments follow the recent disclosure by the Minister of Energy, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, that the government has signed two new Power Purchasing Agreements (PPAs) to add about 720 megawatts (MW) of power to the country’s generation capacity.
Speaking to Citi News, Dr. Sulemana emphasized the need for the government to judiciously manage the power sector.
“We have been bandying around that we have excess capacity, and I think we should respect the sensibility of Ghanaians. We shouldn’t keep talking about excess capacity when we have pockets of dumsor, and even now, we are signing new generation schemes.
“If you look at what we currently have and what we need during peak hours, we are almost reaching our required capacity. So, as a matter of fact, we need new streams to come online, and one way to do that is to commercialize what we already have because we always talk about the fact that we have excess capacity, yet we have installed capacity that can reach 5000 megawatts. So why can’t we commercialize that?”
