Businesses and Industry will pay lower tariffs for power in the future as the current Government aims to reserve hydro-electric power supply for their needs while ensuring that residential consumers rely more on relatively expensive thermal sources.

Hydropower production is cheaper than thermal production. The latter involves the purchase of gas and light crude oil, prices of which are determined by various factors on the world market.

Consumers of power produced from hydroelectric sources are, therefore, sure to pay less than those who consume power from thermal sources.

On his recent visit to the Akosombo hydroelectric power station, President Mahama said: “Increasingly we have to make thermal our main source of power and then manage our hydro resources as supplementary and a backup.

“We must also conserve more of our hydro to give to businesses and to industry so that they can get lower power rates and then on the residential side we pay more so that we can create more jobs in this country,” he said.

Ghana has many thermal plants across the country, but they are not in use as a result of lack of gas supply from the West Africa Gas Pipeline in Nigeria.

The inability of the plants to produce power, together with low water level in the country’s three main hydro dams – Akosombo, Bui and Kpong – has conspired to plunge the country into a power crisis.

Between 440 and 650 Megawatts of power is being shed during off-peak and peak hours instead of 250 and 350 Megawatts, respectively as earlier planned.