VRA: New schedule of load management

... to forestall shutdown of dam

Accra, March 27, GNA - A stringent load management programme that goes into force on Wednesday is to forestall a total shutdown of the Akosombo Dam before the onset of the rains as the Dam is currently operating below the technically recommended minimum level, the Volta River Authority (VRA) said on Tuesday.

The new measures have also been taken because Cote d'Ivoire, which promised earlier in the year to supplement the energy requirement with a 200-megawatt supply, disappointed Ghana at the last minute, Mr Joshua Ofedei, Chief Executive of VRA told a press conference in Accra. "After assurances at the beginning of the year of their supply at the highest level, an official Ivorian delegation came down in March to inform the Minister of Energy and VRA of technical difficulties associated with their generating equipment which makes it difficult to provide supplies to Ghana from March to the end of June 2007," he said. "They cited the low levels of their own hydro plants, which had also reduced hydro supply availability to support their own system, decreased availability of natural gas for their thermal production and also the need for maintenance work on the two thermal plants being operated by independent power producers," Mr Ofedei added. Mr Ofedei said based on these explanations, Ghana had to find its own means of dealing with the deficit hence the new load shedding programme.

Under the new load management cycle of four days, customer groups would go off once during the day for 12 hours and once during the night for 12 hours.

The level of the dam on Monday was 237.66 feet, well below the minimum operating level of 240 feet.

He said government had provided funding and they were working closely with the Ministries of Energy and Finance and Economic Planning to procure and install about 136 megawatts of emergency power plants.

"The first 50MW has been installed at Tema and is being tested prior to commencement of commercial operations by the end of this month. The remaining 86MW would be brought into service by the end of April," he said.

Mr Ofedei said a consortium of mining companies was working with VRA to develop an 80MW thermal plant in Tema, which was due to be commissioned in June.

He said VRA with the support from government was building a 126MW crude oil fired thermal plant also in Tema due to be completed by the end of August 2007.

Mr Ofedie said VRA was reducing its supplies to Togo and Benin following the commissioning of transmission line from Nigeria to Benin. Benin and Togo would now receive part of their energy supply from Nigeria and this has enabled VRA to reduce supply to 25MW and retain 75MW of supply, which would otherwise have been demanded by these countries.

He said full synchronization of the Nigerian power system with the Ghanaian system had been delayed because of technical difficulties associated with the load frequency differences between the two systems. "Therefore, even though the systems were synchronized and capable of exchanging power in late February 2007, the systems separated after only seven minutes of operation.

"Our engineers, in collaboration with the Secretariat of the West Africa Power Pool have been working with the Nigerians to resolve this technical issue."

He said a team from Nigeria would be visiting the VRA next week for further discussions and they would also use the opportunity to understudy the Automatic Frequency Load Shedding System in order to adopt uniform operating modalities to facilitate the synchronization.