The government has signed two new Power Purchasing Agreement (PPA) to add about 720 Mega Watts (MW) of power to the country’s generation capacity, Minister of Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh has disclosed.
The two agreements 370MW AKSA, Tema and 350MW AKSA, Kumasi were signed under the new PPA policy which replaced the earlier “Take or Pay” policy arrangement.
Apart from ensuring prudent addition of power generation to the existing ones, the new PPA policy also enhances efficiency in generation and distribution in the country.
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Dr. Prempeh who was taking his turn at the weekly Minister’s Briefing organised by the Ministry of Information in Accra yesterday, said it was not true that this government had not added a Mega Watt of power to the already existing ones.
He said even though a number of PPAs had been signed under this government to add more capacity to the generating capacity of the country, the new agreements had been done within the framework of efficiency unlike previous agreements.
The minister said government had also undertaken a number of measures within the power sector to improve on efficiency.
These measures he said included the conversion of the 200MW KTPP plant and the 220MW CENIT/TTIPP plant from open cycle thermal plants to combined cycles as well as retrofitting the 132 MW T3 plant.
Dr Opoku Prempeh said government was doing a lot in the power sector with some level of emphasis also on distribution.
He said Ghana had increased its share of renewable energy in the generation mix of the country.
The minister explained that the share of solar in the mix had increased to 3.2 per cent of the percentage target of generation by 2030.
In addition, he said there was an ongoing utility scale solar projects currently ongoing with 100MW solar Photovoltaic (PV) under construction at Bui while the four Mega Watt floating Solar PV on the Bui Reservoir completed, thus bring the total floating PV to five megawatts, making it the biggest in Africa while the 15MW solar PV phase II at Kaleo had been completed.
Dr. Opoku Prempeh explained that the challenges confronting the power transmission sector which involved congested networks, overaged infrastructure and right of way encroachment were all being addressed.
He said a number of infractions including the 161Kilo Volt (KV) Volta-Achimota Mallam Transmission line upgrade, in addition to the Kumasi-Kintampo section of the 330 Kumasi-Bolgatanga transmission line project had been completed.
He said feasibility studies had been completed for the third Bulk Supply Point (BSP) in Kumasi, the Dunkwa 330KV substation and the Static Var Compensation at Ahodwo substation.
The minister said as part of the Electricity Company of Ghana’s (ECG) reforms, the company had introduced a number of measures to improve its efficiency in revenue mobilisation.
He said the ECG had started the implementation of boundary metering and distribution transformer metering.
Already, boundary meters for nine operational regions and nine districts had been completed with 88 districts at various stages of completion, adding that about 16,000 distribution transformer had been surveyed and the metering would commence next year, he emphasised.
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Touching on the petroleum downstream sector, he explained that the excess forex demand for importation of petroleum products coupled with the increased global prices resulted in the escalation of pump prices.
He said through prudent negotiations the Bank of Ghana (BoG) led to the implementation of forex auction window for BIDECs as well as the establishment of credit reference bureau for all dealers.
The minister explained that the introduction of the government’s Gold for Oil policy significantly reduced forex exposure on BOST and BIDECs.