A planned scheduled exercise by Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo), in collaboration with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), is expected to cause power outages in Kumasi.
According to the Energy Minister, Dr. John Abdulai Jinapor, the two companies are expected to undertake an upgrade exercise on the Kumasi-Anwomaso transmission line.
The project is set to commence on Monday, July 20.
It aims to enhance the transmission line’s capacity from 364 megawatts to 1,000 megawatts, effectively tripling the electricity supply to Ghana’s second-largest city.
During an inspection of the project site, Jinapor emphasised that the upgrade is crucial to accommodate Kumasi’s increasing electricity demand and to avert potential failures in the power network.
“If we don’t do this improvement, we could collapse the entire grid,” he informed journalists.
He noted that the transmission line has been operational for over 30 years and is no longer capable of sufficiently meeting the rising residential and industrial demands, especially with new power generation facilities now supplying Kumasi.
The minister said that authorities had originally intended to build a new transmission line parallel to the existing one.
Still, decades of encroachment on GRIDCo’s right-of-way have rendered that plan unfeasible.
“Unfortunately, over the years there’s been a lot of encroachment on GRIDCo’s right of way,” he remarked.
“The normal situation is that under transmission lines there ought not to be any construction, but unfortunately there has been construction over the years”.
Instead of demolishing residences and providing significant compensation, engineers will dismantle the current transmission line and construct a new one within the same corridor.
He stated that delaying the project was no longer feasible.
“We cannot postpone that forever,” Jinapor said. “Most of these works should have been done years ago, but we can’t keep postponing them”.
The minister indicated that the project was initially anticipated to last six months but has now been reduced to three months due to the deployment of additional work crews.
“I directed that we compress the work and use different shifts and multiple gangs so that we can accelerate the pace of work,” he said.
During the construction phase, certain communities will face scheduled daytime outages while the work is in progress, with electricity expected to be restored in the evenings.
Authorities mentioned that affected areas would receive prior notification before power interruptions occur.
Jinapor emphasised that the ministry aims to minimise disruptions to both businesses and households.
“The objective is to ensure that we do not disrupt business activity for a long time,” he said, urging residents to “bear with us” during this temporary inconvenience.
He pointed out that recent improvement efforts by ECG had already enhanced electricity supply in Kumasi, noting that the latest upgrade would provide adequate transmission capacity for many years to come.
Contractor China Water Engineering has sent multiple teams to the site. Out of the 60 transmission towers needed, 56 have already been completed, leaving four remaining.
GRIDCo is also utilising the construction period to upgrade transformers at the Ahodwo substation, which supplies electricity to Kumasi’s central business district and nearby residential areas.
GRIDCo Chief Executive Frank Otchere stated that the expansion of the transmission line must be accompanied by increased transformer capacity to ensure the upgraded network operates efficiently.
