Ghana’s power grid has suffered its second nationwide blackout in less than a month, with Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) blaming transmission faults for the disruptions.

The latest outage occurred at about 4:30 a.m. on Thursday, August 20, 2026.

GRIDCo said a major fault on the Akosombo-Volta transmission line caused the Akosombo generating units and some thermal plants to trip automatically.

The company apologised for the disruption and said its technical teams were working to restore power across the country.

The latest incident is the second nationwide blackout in three weeks. On July 29, a disturbance at about 3:11 a.m. caused several generating plants to trip, leaving parts of Accra, Kumasi and northern Ghana without power for up to 18 hours in some areas.

GRIDCo’s preliminary investigation attributed the July 29 incident to a likely lightning strike.

Power outage hits parts of Ghana

The major outages have also occurred alongside several localised power cuts.

On August 16, 2026, GRIDCo cut power to parts of the Greater Accra Region to enable engineers to replace a transmission tower at Ashaiman that was damaged after a fuel tanker exploded during welding work nearby.

The repeated outages have renewed concerns about a possible return of “dumsor”, the prolonged power crisis that affected Ghana for several years.

GRIDCo has previously said there are no plans for scheduled power interruptions. However, the recent transmission faults and other outages have raised concerns about the reliability of the national grid.

GRIDCo said it would continue to provide updates as efforts to restore power progress.

DR/MA

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