VRA claims Ghana needs $1.5 billion of power investment to end power crisis

• 10 years ago (2014-11-18)
• Junior Isles

Africa 320 North America 1021

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Ghana’s main power generator, the Volta River Authority (VRA), estimates that around $1.5 billion in investment will be needed to end the country’s power generation crisis.

The VRA believes that only aggressive investment in the power sector will solve the current energy shortfall in the medium term, with the current load shedding scheme viewed as undesirable and unsustainable.

Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCO) has stated that supply problems with Nigerian natural gas imports are behind the current erratic power supply that consumers suffer.

VRA’s Head of Corporate Communications, Samuel Fletcher, revealed to local media that proper investment in the power sector were years and decades overdue, though some programmes are currently under way.

“Today various stakeholders, various partners including governments are helping us invest in a number of projects for the future, which will come to fruition in about two years’ time,” Fletcher said.

As an example of early power investment, Fletcher cited Ghana’s first President Kwame Nkrumah’s capacity drive. “Kwame Nkrumah had a vision that is so wonderful, we need only 10 per cent of Akosombo’s capacity at that time as a country. We needed 60 MW; he built 600 MW.”

Ghana currently gets by with barely 2800 MW generation capacity, but demand exceeds this by around 20 per cent. “As the load keeps growing our problems will get worse,” Fletcher stated.

Fletcher estimates that if 1 MW of generation capacity costs roughly $1 million, then $1.5 billion of investment would be enough to put Ghana’s power sector on a sure footing.

One third of the $1.5 billion would fix the current power deficit, with a further third paying for reserve capacity of 500 MW, and the final third securing long term energy security via liquefied natural gas (LNG).