NewzExecutive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Ben Boakye, has raised concerns over the increasing frequency of nationwide power outages, warning that urgent measures are needed to prevent repeated disruptions to Ghana’s electricity supply. His comments follow two major power disruptions recorded within the past few weeks, with the latest outage attributed by GRIDCo to a fault around the Akosombo transmission line According to him, while power system trips are not unusual even in advanced electricity systems, the frequency of such incidents in Ghana is becoming ‘alarming’. Speaking in an interview on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, he said the challenges appear to be linked partly to vulnerabilities in the country’s transmission network, particularly around the Akosombo transmission infrastructure.
“It’s quite disturbing to have this number of trips in a short period of time. That is also not to acknowledge that trips don’t happen in the electricity system. Even in advanced world, you have some of these trips, but I think what is becoming alarming is the frequency that these trips are happening,” he said.
He explained that Ghana’s electricity network comprises both 161kV and 330kV transmission lines, creating a risk of cascading failures when the higher-voltage network experiences a fault. “When you have generation plants giving so much load on the 330kV line, and the 330kV line fails, the possibility of transferring all that load onto the 161 becomes really high,” he explained. He said the 161kV network may not be able to carry the additional load when the 330kV line trips, potentially causing further disruptions and ultimately resulting in a nationwide blackout.
Mr Boakye also pointed to inadequate protection at the Akosombo switchyard as another factor that could contribute to the cascading effect. He said when a fault occurs, generation facilities may respond by cutting off, leading to frequency imbalances that can cause the entire power system to collapse instead of limiting the outage to an affected section. He therefore called for immediate measures to isolate generation plants quickly when a major transmission line trips, describing such interventions as necessary to prevent isolated faults from escalating into nationwide outages.
“We need to really find an immediate solution for making sure that we can isolate some generation plan… The Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Benjamin Boakye, has raised concerns over the increasing frequency of nationwide power system trips in Ghana, warning that the recurring blackouts point to deeper weaknesses in the country’s electricity transmission infrastructure. His comments followed a nationwide blackout that affected parts of Ghana on Thursday and were made during an interview on Newsfile on JoyNews on Saturday, August 22.
Mr Boakye acknowledged that power system trips are not unusual, even in advanced electricity markets, where faults can occur and trigger protective systems. However, he said the frequency with which such incidents are occurring in Ghana has become a major concern. “It’s quite disturbing to have these number of trips in a short period of time,” he said, stressing that the issue was not the occurrence of isolated faults but the growing number of system disturbances within a relatively short period.
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