Minister for Energy and Green Transition, Dr. John Abdulai Jinapor
Minister for Energy and Green Transition, Dr John Abdulai Jinapor, says ongoing works to restore the original power transmission arrangement at Akosombo are expected to be completed next month.
According to him, the restoration will address the temporary arrangement currently being used to transmit power from the Akosombo power station to Tema, which he says has been linked to the two major system disturbances recorded this month.
Dr Jinapor was speaking following the latest nationwide power disruption in parts of Ghana on Thursday, August 20, 2026. The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) attributed the incident to a trip in power transmission lines.
The latest disruption is the second major power system incident recorded in August, raising concerns about the reliability of the country’s transmission network.
The Minister explained that the current challenges are linked to a fire incident at the Akosombo switchyard, which forced authorities to adopt a temporary transmission arrangement.
He said engineers initially considered shutting down the Akosombo power station until the control centre could be fully restored, a process that could have taken about six months.
“Ordinarily, we shouldn’t have blackouts more than two in a year… We have a peculiar situation we are dealing with. You recall the fire incident at Akosombo. When I visited them, we had two options,” Dr Jinapor said.
He explained that while some engineers recommended waiting for the control centre to be restored before resuming normal operations, another option was to establish a temporary arrangement using relays to transmit power directly from Akosombo to Tema.
“Some of the engineers thought that we should wait and restore the control center before we supply power. Some also said we could do a temporary arrangement with some relays and feed the power directly from Akosombo all the way to Tema, so that they will use the thermal control room to support the system,” he said.
Dr Jinapor said he opted for the temporary arrangement because keeping Akosombo offline for six months would have had significant implications for the country’s power supply.
“I thought that shutting down Akosombo for six months was untenable, so we opted for the temporal arrangement. That arrangement is not very robust, but given the circumstance that we find ourselves, we thought that even with the fragility, that was the best option,” he said.
The Minister said the two major system disturbances recorded this month can be traced to the temporary arrangement.
“So the two major incidents we’ve had, all of them traces back to the temporal arrangement,” he stated.
However, he said work on restoring the original arrangement is progressing, with four of the six required components already completed.
“But fortunately, we’ve already done four. We are left with two, and my briefing is that next month the other two will be completed,” Dr Jinapor said.
He expressed optimism that the completion of the remaining works will allow the power system to revert to its original configuration and improve its resilience.
“When that is completed, then we would refer to the original arrangement and use that system,” he added.
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