President John Mahama’s government cannot add 3,800 Megawatts to Ghana’s energy production capacity in the next five years as he has promised, energy analyst Muhammed Amin Anta has said on Starr 103.5FM.
“That is not going to happen,” the Executive Director of energy think tank, Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) told Paa Kwesi Asare on Business Focus.
“I’m not being pessimistic,” he added. Mr Mahama made the promise in February when he delivered his state of the nation address to Parliament.
He said: “Following power purchase agreements entered into with several Independent Power Producers (IPPs), and plants that VRA [Volta River Authority] is currently working on, we expect, starting from this year and over the next 5 years to inject 3,665MW into our power transmission grid.”
Mr Mahama gave the breakdown as follows:
1 SUNON ASOGLI (PHASE II) – 360WM
2 SUNON ASOGLI COAL FIRED – 750MW
3 CEN POWER – 350MW
4 JACOBSEN – 360MW
5 AMANDI – 240MW
6 GENERAL ELECTRIC (GE) – 1,000MW
7 VRA (T4) – 185MW
8 VRA (KTPP) – 220MW
He said “It is important to realise that with the exception of the VRA projects, with a total output of 405MW, all the rest of the above projects are to be realised from private independent power producers with Government facilitation.
“Even more interesting is the fact that some of these projects such as Sunon Asogli (phase II) and CenPower have actually already started with commissioning of the projects undertaken. Others such as Jacobsen and Amandi have already cleared Parliamentary scrutiny and obtained the necessary approvals to commence.
“A Memorandum of understanding has been signed with General Electric Corporation of the United States for the 1,000MW of power, and further negotiations with Government are on-going for the final realisation of this very important power project,” the President said.
Mr Anta, however, said the Government’s failure to stick to its own plans will make it an impossibility to achieve the 3,800MW promise.
“At the beginning of this year, ACEP issued a statement in which we expressed significant optimism that the load shedding was going to be addressed this year and we put out our optimism based on certain factors that we were privy to, including what was presented in the 2015 budget. And one of this was that the Kpone thermal plant was going to be completed by the end of the year…we were told that TICO steam turbine – expansion by 110MW – was to be completed by the end of the first quarter of the year, and based on those factors we were very optimistic…unfortunately we have been proved wrong,” he said.
Source: GhanaWeb
