GRIDCo, VRA explain power Sunday's outage

Accra, Oct 19, GNA - The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) and the= Volta River Authority (VRA) on Monday apologised to the public for the inconvenience caused by the loss of electricity supply to the entire coun= try on Sunday morning.

In a statement signed by Mr Charles A. Darku, Chief Executive of GRIDCo, said the loss in power supply at about 1100 hours was the result of a disturbance which led to the automatic tripping and immediate loss of a ll generation units in service at VRA's Akosombo, Kpong and Takoradi Thermal plants.

"We note that at the time, two transmission line sections between Aboadze-Cape Coast and Aboadze-Winneba had been taken out of service by GRIDCo to enable a contractor stringing conductors on the new 330 kv Aboadze-Tema line under construction to work safely. This work was started on Saturday, October 17, and was expected to be completed the next day when the disturbance occurred."

The statement said the power restoration efforts of the two utilities started immediately and generation units were brought on line after system stability problems encountered during restoration had been resolved.