The Minister for Energy, John Jinapor, says the government cannot issue a fixed load-shedding timetable because the current electricity situation is highly dynamic, with engineers constantly working to restore generation capacity and stabilise supply.

Speaking at the Government Accountability Series in Accra on Monday, April 27, the Minister explained that power updates are being issued in real time due to ongoing changes in available generation.

“The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), under the management of Engineer Julius Kpekpena, has been publishing regional updates, and in collaboration with the Ministry of Information, we’re even going to make it more available for everybody to see what is happening.

“But because it is fluid, because it is not like the regular load-shedding where you are aware that for a foreseeable period of time you cannot restore power, we cannot do weekly publications,” he said.

He noted that technical teams are currently working continuously to restore plants that are offline, which makes long-term scheduling difficult.

“In fact, engineers are working around the clock within this week; they are pushing to restore all the plants back online. And so we can only provide very short interval updates,” he said.

Mr Jinapor explained that even schedules published within the day can quickly change as additional generation capacity is restored.

“Indeed this morning, we published a schedule for 6am to 6pm. This afternoon they’ve had to review it because one more plant has come on with about 140 megawatts,” he said.

He stressed that government will continue to communicate openly with the public about challenges in the power sector rather than downplaying them.

“So we will not live in denial. When we face challenges, we will tell Ghanaians,” he said.

His remarks come in the wake of growing public concern over stability in electricity supply, following incidents such as the fire at the Akosombo Power Control Centre and recent management changes within the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) in the Ashanti Region.

The briefing also follows his directive for the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCO) to step aside to allow investigations into the Akosombo incident, which caused disruptions to parts of the national grid and triggered power outages in several regions.