The Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) has refuted claims by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) that the recent power outages between 7 pm and 11 pm were due to transformer overload.
The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) in a statement on March 11, announced that a periodic power outage during peak periods 7 pm-11 pm may result from blown fuses of transformers.
ECG explained that six hundred and thirty (630) distribution transformers within communities across their operational areas have been identified to be full to capacity due to increased demand.
“This situation may result in blown fuses and broken conductors causing outages, especially during the peak load period (7pm – 11pm) in the affected areas.
“However, we wish to assure our customers that transformer upgrading and new projects are on-going to relieve these transformers to ensure a more reliable power supply.
The statement prompted the PURC to request data on ECG transformers to validate their public statement.
Following the assessment, PURC found out that out of the 715 transformer information given, 31 were loaded less than 70%, 595 were loaded between 70 and 100%, and 89 were loaded over 100%.
In a report, the PURC stated that after comparing the ECG data with the entire set of outage data for January through March 18, 2024, 647 outage instances were found to have occurred between 7 and 11 p.m. Just three of the 647 outage instances included scheduled transformer-related failures.
According to the Commission, the assessments revealed that failures unrelated to overloaded transformers and GRIDCo’s load control procedures were responsible for the bulk of the outages that occurred between 7 and 11 p.m.
Therefore, the PURC said, “ECG’s attribution of the outages between 7 pm and 11 pm to transformer overload was not factually accurate.”
It also stated that the Commission is now looking into the reasons behind these outages.
Meanwhile, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) has issued a hefty penalties of GHS 5,868,000.00 on members of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) board who served from January 1 to March 18, 2024 over the recent power challenges.
“The Commission established from its analysis of data submitted by ECG that there were 4142 outages to consumers within ECG’s operational areas between January and March 2024. Out of this number, 165 representing 3.98% of the total outages were ECG-planned outages. Further analysis showed that of the 165 ECG planned outages, 40 were supported by public notices, while there were no notices for the remaining 125 outages.
“Further, 38 of the 40 notices did not comply with the requisite three-day statutory notice prescribed under Regulation 39 of L.I. 2413. This indicates that in 163 instances of planned outages, ECG did not comply with the law.”
