The Minister of Power, Dr. Kwabena Donkor, has reiterated that his outfit has put in place all the necessary preparations to ensure the much talked about power-ship, which is set to arrive by the end of the month, begins operations immediately upon arrival at the Tema fishing harbour.
His comments come on the back of reports that the power-ship, which was expected to arrive in the country on November 10th, is still stuck in Turkey due to difficulties faced by Ghanaian authorities seeking partnership for the provision of fuel on which the power barge will run.
During a tour of some power projects in Tema, the Power Minister admitted that the power-ship is still in Turkey.
He explained: “I said in Istanbul that it is going to take about three weeks for the barge to come here. It is a process and it has to go to quarantine for Customs to check and pass it before it can set sail. So after it has gone through all these processes, it will set sail to Ghana,” he said.
He further emphasised that even though arrival of the power barge is one of the measures government is taking to mitigate the current load-shedding, it will not necessarily prevent temporary operational power outages in the country.
“Let me emphasise that load-shedding is a planned systemic outage arising out of generation inadequacy. That does not mean that when load-shedding ends, we cannot have operational outages in some areas,” he said.
When journalists arrived at the Kpone thermal power plant, work on the project was still ongoing and about 88 percent complete.
The two power plants which have 220MW capacity are expected to be complete by February 2016. However, the first part of the project, which will add 110MW to the national grid, is scheduled for completion before end of the year.
Meanwhile, Francise Agbenyo — Project Manager of the site, informed journalists that some constraints have been responsible for setbacks the project has suffered and inability to meet the original deadline set for the project.
“We have exceeded the timelines for the project because of the risk factor associated with it. The major risk we are facing now is that the equipment has been in storage for a very long time, and so some of the parts are not functioning.
“This can only be detected during the commissioning stage when equipment is tested for the first time to access its functionality. If the testing is done and we detect a fault in any of the component parts, we have to replace it; and that is what we are doing now, replacing old parts,” he said.
Other sites the media toured include the Tema-based Sunon Asogli power plant, which is expected to add 360MW to the national grid. Work on the first unit will add 120MW to the national grid and is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Dr. Donkor expressed his satisfaction at the rate at which work is ongoing.
Work on the Kpone Independent Power project which has a capacity of 350MW is also ongoing.