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Claims made by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) that transformer overload was the cause of the recent power outages that occurred between 7 and 11 p.m. have been denied by the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC).
In a statement released on March 11, the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) stated that blown transformer fuses could be the cause of a recurrent power outage during peak hours of 7 p.m. to 11p.m.
Six hundred and thirty (630) distribution transformers in communities throughout their operational areas have been found to be full to capacity as a result of increased demand, according to ECG.
“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 public remark made by the PURC led them to request information on ECG transformers.
31 of the 715 transformers with information provided were loaded less than 70%, 595 were loaded between 70 and 100%, and 89 were loaded above 100%, according to PURC’s evaluation.
The Public Utility Regulatory Commission (PURC) said that 647 outage incidents were discovered to have happened between 7 and 11 p.m., based on a comparison of the ECG data with the complete set of outage data for January through March 18, 2024. Scheduled transformer-related failures were seen in just three of the 647 outage instances.
The majority of the outages that happened between 7 and 11 p.m., according to the Commission, were caused by failures unrelated to overloaded transformers and GRIDCo’s load control processes, according to the evaluations.
“ECG’s attribution of the outages between 7 pm and 11 pm to transformer overload was not factually accurate,” the PURC declared as a result.
It further said that the Commission is currently investigating the causes of these disruptions.
In the meantime, due to the recent power outages, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) fined members of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) board, who held office from January 1 to March 18, 2024, a whopping GHS 5,868,000.00.
“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” PURC added in their findings.
Read the findings below:
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
