Minister orders audit of strategic energy installations

The Minister of Energy and Green Transition, Dr John Abdulai Jinapor, has ordered a thorough audit of all strategic energy installations and infrastructure in the country to ensure that they are robust and can withstand pressure. 

The audit, which is to take immediate effect, will cut across power and downstream oil and gas infrastructure.

This follows last Thursday’s major fire outbreak at the Akosombo Substation, a major point for power evacuation to many parts of the country.

The incident caused a disruption in operations and power generation, as it led to the loss of about 1,000 megawatts of power. 
As a result, power supply has been affected in some parts of the country.

Damage

Briefing the media yesterday at the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) Power Station at Akosombo, Dr Jinapor described the damage as quite extensive and very serious.

He, however, assured Ghanaians that the incident was being resolved for the restoration of power to consumers, from yesterday, while the Ministry awaited a full report on what happened.

The Energy Minister was accompanied by officials from the Energy Ministry as well as the VRA Chief Executive, Edward Obeng Kenzo; the Chairman of the GRIDCo Board, Kukuua Maurice-Ankrah; the Akwamuhene, Odeniho Kwafo Akoto III, and the District Executive of Asuojyaman, Godwin Bobobee, among others.    

Investigation

Dr Jinapor said the ministry had set up a seven-member committee, including experts from the Ghana National Fire Service, GRIDCo, and the Volta River Authority (VRA), among other institutions, to find out what led to the incident.

The committee, chaired by the Board Chairman of Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and former Chief Executive of GRIDCo, William Amuna, has about three weeks to present a detailed report.

Setback, recovery

The Minister of Energy described the incident as a major setback in the energy sector, but said power producers were working seriously to restore the power loss.

He stated that from discussions with some of the power producers, it was confirmed that it was not the first time such an incident had happened, but they also explained that the extent of damage from the current explosion was very serious.

“The briefing I got was that yesterday, there was a fire incident following an explosion, which gutted the whole building of GRIDCo. But this building has been constructed in such a way that when there is an explosion, it is contained within,” he said.

“The question I am asking is, without prejudicing the report that would be presented, between that explosion and men moving to quench the fire, what was the time lag? Did we have CCTV cameras?

Did we have emergency response systems? The report should be ready so that we can get to the root cause of the incident,” he stressed.

The Energy Minister further stated that the ministry’s immediate focus was to restore power to curtail any inconvenience the current situation was causing.

“The immediate focus as a ministry is the restoration of power.

You can see that engineers are working around the clock.

Chief executives of GRIDCO and VRA have spent much time since yesterday to ensure power is restored.

“Because we are talking about 1000 megawatts and for Ghana standard that’s a lot of power, and so whatever we can do, the ministry and its agencies would do to ensure power was restored quickly; that is the main focus,” Dr Jinapor stated.