The Technical Committee set up by the Minister of Energy to develop a planning report for the country’s power sector has debunked claims by the Member of Parliament for Yapei-Kusawgu, Mr John Jinapor that the country risks returning to persistent power outages popularly referred to as ‘dumsor’.
According to the committee, there was no such risk as the country had more than enough generating capacity and that the MP who is also a ranking member of the mines and energy committee got it all wrong.
Last week, MrJinapor in a statement warned that the existing generation capacities of the country would not be adequate to serve the projected demand with 18per cent reserve margins for any of the planning years.
However, speaking to the Ghanaian Times in Accra to clarify issues, the Chairman of the Power Planning Technical Committee (PPTC), Mr Frank Otchere said per the 2022 Electricity Supply Plan (ESP) the country had a total installed generation capacity of 5,265.1MW.
Out of this, he explained that the dependable capacity stood at 4,706MW while the projected annual peak demand was expected to go up to 4,793MW by 2026.
MrOtcheresaid itwas obvious that both the installed capacity and dependable capacity were in excess of the peak demand, stressing that “There cannot be imminent ‘dumsor’ as was portrayed.”
Furthermore, he explained that ‘dumsor’ would only occur when the actual demand was higher than what the system was able to generate.
He clarified that the additional demand recommended in the PPTC’s report was only required to serve as extra capacity to serve as reserve.
On the future needs,he said the committee’s recommendation for further generation capacity of about 822MW between 2023 and 2027 was based on the scenario or a sensitivity analysis on capacity requirement in the event that the Bui Hydro Plant was able to run only on two (2) units instead of three (3) during the peak period.
“This situation is rare, and was analysed only as a sensitivity scenario in the unlikely event of such a situation”, the statement said.
Touching on claims by MrJinapor that the PPTC’s report negated the argument of country having excess gas leading to capacity payments, he said the recommendation of the ESP 2022 for arrangements to increase gas supply did not imply procuring new gas facilities.
Rather he said it was only alerting that demand was growing and therefore there was the need to make arrangements to increase volumes of gas supplied from the existing gas facilities.
