Countrywide "loss of electricity supply", a/k/a "lights off"

I've been monitoring the electricity issue for a few days now and finally found an article published online a mere 4 hours ago by modernghana.com.

It transpires from this that the power cut sustained Monday night was not local, not even affecting the whole of Accra, but countrywide.

GRIDCo (I haven't been able to identify a website for this company) apparently issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon, explaining the event as

an explosion in equipment used for measuring power flows and a resultant fire outbreak, which affected other nearby equipment.

This led to the loss of all generating units and some transmission lines within the National Power System(1)

Better late than never. We now have an explanation. We are also warned of more power cuts to come:

GRIDCo has requested the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to reduce supply to consumers in Accra by 50 MW in order to prevent overloading on the two operating lines to the Achimota substation.(2)

Although the specifics are not disclosed, chances are that we'll have staggered cuts for an undetermined period of time, that is, while

GRIDCo is working around the clock to restore the line to service within the shortest possible time(3)

What about the power cut of last Friday/Saturday? A mere dress rehearsal? Are we to understand that there are 2 different issues: this accident, which GRIDCo felt inclined to communicate about, albeit quite late, and other "regular" power cuts?

(1), (2) & (3) "Ghana Grid explains widespread power outage in Accra, Tema"; modernghana.com, April 22, 2009

A very loud silence

This morning I bought Daily Graphic and The Statesman, thinking I would find some mention of the long power cut we suffered Monday night, either in the form of an article or of a press release published by VRA, ECG, or whomever is supposed to be in charge. No such thing.

Instead, the first page of Daily Graphic showed in caps and bold, white on black letters:

Energy sector needs $10bn (to finance initiatives in next 5 years, says minister)

I won't waste too much time asking why dollars, when we have our own cedi. Yes, the cedi erodes every day but still, it's our currency, the one in which most of the audience of this paper earns a living and makes expenses day in, day out.

The article, which continues on page 3, describes what the Energy Minister, Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, disclosed to members of the media yesterday.

Dr Oteng-Adjei noted that the vision of the energy sector was to assure universal access and choice of modern energy forms to all Ghanaians, which was intended to be achieved by 2020.

He said the ministry also envisioned a sector that would contribute significantly to national revenue and economic growth by becoming a net exporter of oil and power by 2012 and 2013.(1)

That every Ghanaian will have access to energy by the year 2020 is commendable. There is no doubt it will help development tremendously. Exporting power as soon as 2013 is excellent news too. What I don't quite get is how this will be achieved in less than 4 years. More specifically, how the country's power generation capacity will be almost trebled so fast.

He said at the inception of the new government in January, the installed operational power generation capacity in the country was 1,810 megawatts

The objective of the government, he said, was to achieve a target of 5,000 MW of installed power generation capacity in the medium term, as that level of capacity would enable the country to supply adequate power to meet growth in national electricity demand and also for export to neighbouring countries.(2)

I would rise and applaud at such wonderful news if I were not bothered by a terribly pedestrian question: where will the money come from? To understand this point better, let's get back to the beginning of the article:

He said while the government would continue to inject funds into the sector when available, a major policy shift was to encourage energy sector institutions to raise a substantial portion of their capital investment requirements on their own without recourse to the government.(3)

That gives me pause. "When available"... In clear, there is no definite budget earmarked for that project, and energy sector institutions will get whatever surplus, if any, there is when everything else is taken care of. "On their own"... The balance of this indefinite amount granted by the government has to be procured on the market. What these few lines seem to mean, to me, is that there is close to no money at all to execute this "vision". Isn't it pure wizardry?

It won't escape the reader that this meeting was held the very morning after the latest night-long power cut which, I'm told, affected most of the ATMA (Accra Tema Metropolitan Area); yet, not a single word was said about it. Is there a consensus about not asking uncomfortable questions (the blatant failure of our system to provide uninterrupted, quality power would definitely come like a fly in the ointment of this extremely attractive picture of Ghana in only 3-4 years time)? Or are people of the media avoiding to state the obvious, routine, "normal" situation of highly unreliable power supply?

This is scary. We, as a country, seem to find it "normal" that we don't have power for 10 or 20 hours on end. We, as a country, as exemplified by the people of the media, our Minister of Energy, and the communications people of VRA, ECG and maybe GRIDCO (they do have communications people, don't they?), in this instance, have already resigned ourselves to unreliable supply, appalling service, and non-existent communication. This string of deceptively good news, and the way they are reproduced indiscriminately in the media, is all the more shocking and saddening.

(1), (2), (3) Daily Graphic, Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Lights off = Development off

This morning, my better half (currently in Britain) told me to listen to a programme titled Nana Online, on a Ghanaian Internet-based radio: http://www.hotdigitalradio.com/. One of the topics was the power cuts we've had over the last few days and, notably, last night, which seems to have affected all the ATMA (Accra and Tema Metropolitan Area).

I wish I could have listened to it myself, but unfortunately Vodafone (ex GT Broadband) has been playing up and with my nerves for the last few days. This morning I spent almost two hours on phone with their hotline and, from terribly unstable, my connection went down altogether. Well, this is another topic, albeit not totally unrelated to my concern(s) of today.

In my area (Baatsonaa), the electricity first went off at 6.30pm yesterday evening, to come back one hour later. I had only started rejoicing when it went off again and we went to sleep in the dark. Light came back fleetingly at some point (I'm not sure if it was once or twice) during the night, then back on for good at 4am this morning.

As readers may remember, this was not the first long powercut this 'season' (although I certainly hope there is no such thing as a powercuts season like we have a rainy season).

Last Friday and again last night, I checked the time when electricity went off and came back on and noticed that it is cut off on the hour or half hour and is put back on likewise. Sharp. I therefore think we are not dealing with random, unscheduled cuts, the kind that could occur in case of material breakdown.

A quick visit to VRA's ("Four Decades of Reliable Power Supply") and ECG's websites show that neither company felt they owed consumers any explanation. It's remarkable, indeed, that neither has a "Press Releases" section. They are not communicating and don't seem to have any intention of communicating anyway.

The feedback message I left on ECG's website last Sunday is unanswered so far.

Beside the sheer annoyance of these powercuts, the lack of communication, the disregard for the consumer, my concern is the following:

How can any country develop without reliable electricity and water?

Individuals are all affected, to various extents, by the lack of electricity or its unreliability. The lack /unreliability of electricity means lack of fridges, freezers, fans, etc., or their short life span, due to power surges or brownouts; the same goes for lighting devices, which break, fuses blow, etc. The consequences in terms of individual development are several:

1. People lose their household appliances and therefore their investment, and are in fact made poorer by this persistent situation;
2. The lack or inefficiency of various conservation means lead to food spoilage, reduces the amount available per person -leading to hunger for the poorer- and exposes everyone, from the newborn baby to the elderly, to various digestive disorders, illnesses, and death;
3. Light-lessness means that schoolchildren and students cannot study as much as they may want or need, or have to do so in exceedingly difficult conditions.

The impact on the economy at large is many sided: loss of opportunities, loss of investment, loss of workdays, need to tie-up investments in an alternative power supply (generator) which is expensive to run too, failure to attract investment, inability to run a company reliably, to keep the costs of production competitive internationally, etc.

"Electricity for all" and the "Right to electricity" are slogans sweet to the ear. Realistically, we seem to be very far from achieving the first; and little more than a handful of idealists believe in the second.

I believe that money is not the main issue. The easiest explanation is that we suffer because we are poor. However, I think it is only part of the explanation. We suffer because we lack vision. We suffer because we lack a holistic approach. We suffer because we don't really believe, deep down, that things can be otherwise. That we can deal with our problems. That it is up to us to define where we want to be in 10, 20, or 50 years from now and to devise a path to reach this target. Then we'll work all the more happily and relentlessly that we'll have taken our future in our own hands, for a change, and above all b-e-l-i-e-v-e that we are able to succeed.

Powerless

I know this will not help the opinion a few of my readers have of me. Yes I'm Don Quixote in drag and keep exposing things everybody else knows are "the way things are done here". I am fully aware of this too, actually. What I don't and sincerely hope I won't accept in my lifetime is that they are "normal" or that I (or anybody else) should live with it, put up with it, resign myself to it.

This week was marked by two events:

• the onset of the rainy season: we've had three downpours since last Monday, which is good news as far as I am concerned, since Ghana is very much an agricultural country.
• the onset of what I hope is not a season of long powercuts.

"Lights off" have taken a dramatic turn with cuts lasting anytime between two and twenty (yes, 20!) hours. The Daily Graphic publishes every day an update of the level of water in Akosombo dam. My understanding is that the lower the level, the more conservation we need to tide us over till the rains come to increase the level again, the idea being that we don't want to run (completely) dry in the meantime. Since I haven't bought the papers lately, I set out to find the information online.

VRA (Volta River Authority), whose

primary function is to generate and supply electrical energy for industrial, commercial and domestic use in Ghana

indeed have a website where they publish daily updates of the water level in the dam. As of yesterday, April 18, 2009, the level was said to be 257.34ft, versus 248.13ft on the same day last year. The minimum operating level being 240ft, it seems that we are still above it and in better shape than last year at the same period. How comes, then, that we suffer such protracted cuts?

Since the VRA's website includes neither a "press releases" page nor any public interest notice about interruption of supply forecasts, I went on to the ECG (Electricity Company of Ghana) website, since the company's mission is

[to] provide quality electricity sevices to support economic growth and development in Ghana

in the hope that they would provide information as to why we should put up with the inconvenience. I was disappointed again. The website seems mostly to be there to inform the consumers about the various rates and ways they can pay their bills. In fact, ECG seems to devote quite a lot of time and energy to make sure that we, the consumers, perform our part of the contract, while their concern for their own performance appears far less obvious.

I found a page called "Feedback" where I posted the following:

Dear Sirs,

I am writing to express my concern with the protracted power cuts sustained this week in my neighbourhood (Baatsonaa, Accra). In particular, the whole area has been without light between 7pm Friday 17 April 2009 and 3pm Saturday 18 April 2009.

Could you please explain the reason for these power cuts and whether we should prepare to face more interruptions of supply in the foreseeable future?

Thank you for your prompt reply.

Yours faithfully,

E3AYO

I hope it won't come too much as a shock if I tell you I won't hold my breath waiting for their reply. Any website where the current date is stated as

Monday, October 19, 2009

is highly suspicious of being manned by incompetent and/or negligent people.

A last word: ECG's stated vision is

"To be among the leading Electricity Distribution Companies in Africa in terms of Quality, Safety and Reliability."

I only wish. Actually, I'm not really interested to know how ECG fares in comparison with other African electricity distribution companies. I just want reliable light.