GRIDCo seeks help from Ivory Coast to ease power crisis during Easter

The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) is making efforts to get assistance from neighbouring Ivory Coast to meet the country’s power deficit during the Easter period.

According to the power transmitting company, emergency measures employed to keep the lights on across the country during the Christmas period would be replicated dutring the Easter season.

In an interview on TV3 Network, the Systems Control Manager of GRIDCo, Mr Frank Otchere said, “We are trying to get assistance from La Cote d’Ivoire for them to give us some supplementary power supply.”

According to him, should that succeed, “People are going to see a longer duration of power supply than it has been in the past weeks.”

Residential areas are currently enduring 24 hours of power outage with 12 hours supply, while the industrial enclave goes without power for 24 hours every two days.

Mr Otchere, however, stressed that the load shedding exercise may stretch into the third quarter of the year, but it is likely to subside by that period.

He gave the following reasons for a possible Q3 improvement in the power situation that has been a source of frustration for individuals and businesses:

“I believe that as we go into the third quarter, we will still be shedding load but it could come down a bit because we are expecting that TICO would have come on line.

“In addition to that because of the raining season load will go down.”

The current demand of power, according to GRIDCo, is pegged at 2,080 megawatts (MW) but only 1,564 MW is available.

Ghana has also reduced supply to Togo and Benin from 120MW to 50MW.

Source: TV3 Network