The Minister of Energy and Green Transition, John Jinapor, has appealed to Ghanaians to remain calm following a power outage that affected parts of Accra and other parts of the country on Thursday morning.

The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) attributed the disruption to a fault on the Akosombo-Volta transmission line.

Speaking at the commissioning of a new office complex for the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), Dr Jinapor explained that the latest outage was linked to a temporary system introduced after an earlier incident caused significant damage to the Akosombo transmission infrastructure.

According to him, the government had to choose between shutting down the Akosombo plant for about six months to completely reconstruct its control centre or implementing a temporary arrangement that would allow the facility to continue generating and supplying electricity while permanent repairs were carried out.

He said the government opted for the temporary solution to prevent the Akosombo plant from remaining offline for an extended period.

“As ministers, we had a decision to make and I decided that we should go by the temporal measure whilst we put in place a permanent solution,” he said.

Dr Jinapor explained that engineers had been working to maintain the temporary system, which had supported the country’s electricity supply over the past several months.

He, however, noted that the arrangement remains susceptible to frequency disturbances, which could trigger the automatic shutdown of the Akosombo facility as a protective measure for the wider power system.

“Because the temporal measure occasionally, when there’s some frequency disturbance, it takes off Akosombo immediately to protect the system,” he said.

Permanent solution expected next month

The Energy Minister said work on a permanent control centre and associated infrastructure was progressing and was expected to be completed next month.

He appealed to electricity consumers to bear with the temporary challenges until the permanent solution is put in place.

“I would appeal to Ghanaians to bear with us. It hardly happens, but once in a while when you have a major situation, sometimes even brand-new cars you get some challenges here and there,” he said.

Dr Jinapor acknowledged the inconvenience caused by Thursday’s outage, noting that some parts of Accra and other areas experienced interruptions lasting between one and one-and-a-half hours.

He argued, however, that the temporary arrangement helped prevent a potentially longer disruption.

“I can’t compare that to having six months of Akosombo perpetually down,” he said.

The minister further assured the public that electricity had largely been restored across the country.

“I’m only happy to note that despite the challenge we’ve had this morning, GRIDCo has largely restored power to almost all parts of the country,” he said.

He added that areas still experiencing outages would be reconnected as soon as possible.

Dr Jinapor expressed optimism that the completion of the permanent works next month would strengthen the resilience of Ghana’s power supply system.

“I’m sure that by next month we’ll swing back to the original plan and we’ll have a much more resilient power supply situation,” he said.