The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission has expressed that the board members of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) will fulfill the GH¢5.8 million penalty imposed on them. The PURC issued the fine on Tuesday, April 16, citing ECG’s failure to provide a load-shedding schedule following a series of power disruptions between January and March 2024.
Director of Research and Corporate Affairs at the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission, Dr. Eric Kofi Obutey, remains optimistic that the ECG board members will uphold their reputation and settle the fines by the May 30 deadline.
In its report, the PURC revealed discrepancies in ECG’s explanation for the recent power outages experienced by consumers. While ECG attributed the interruptions to overloaded transformers, totaling 630, and unplanned demands from the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), the commission’s analysis of the data provided by ECG paints a different picture.
Of the 715 transformer details examined, only 31 were operating below 70% capacity, while 595 were loaded between 70-100%, and 89 were loaded beyond 100%. Moreover, out of 647 outage incidents occurring between 7 pm and 11 pm, only 3 were planned outages related to transformers. The majority of the outages during this period were attributed to GRIDCo’s load management operations and faults unrelated to overloaded transformers.
Source: Energy Ghana