Ghana: Load-shedding hits as plant availability plunges

Ghana has been forced to introduce load-shedding after low rainfall, technical problems and plant maintenance reduced available power. “With installed generation capacity of about 2,845.5MW, dependable capacity of less than 2,300MW and a suppressed peak demand of about 2,130MW, with no redundancy, the power inadequacy is obvious,” power minister Kwabena Donkor told a 2 February news briefing.Among the problems he cited, low water levels meant two units at Akosombo were out of operation while the other four were operating at 125MW instead of the rated 170MW.