Dumsor: Energy Minister Discloses Upcoming Permanent Solution to Recent Power Challenges

• Energy Minister John Jinapor has attributed Ghana's recent wave of power outages to a fragile temporary system at the Akosombo plant
• GRIDCo confirmed a major fault on the Akosombo–Volta transmission line triggered Thursday's nationwide blackout, which began around 4:30 am
• Jinapor announced that a permanent control centre for the plant is expected to be ready next month, which he said should stabilise supply

Energy Minister John Abdulai Jinapor has identified a makeshift technical arrangement at the Akosombo power plant as the root cause of the intermittent blackouts hitting homes and businesses across Ghana.

Jinapor made the remarks on Thursday, 20 August, at the commissioning of the new Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) building in Accra.

He explained that the temporary control system was installed at Akosombo after a fire and explosion at the GRIDCo substation there in April made a bypass arrangement the only way to avoid a complete six-month shutdown of the facility.

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The Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) confirmed that the widespread outage on Thursday, which cut power to parts of Accra and several other regions from around 4:30 am, resulted from a major fault along the Akosombo–Volta transmission line.

The fault caused the automatic shutdown of Akosombo's generating units as well as some thermal plants, a built-in protection mechanism designed to prevent broader damage to the National Interconnected Transmission System. GRIDCo said engineers isolated the affected line and began restoring supply to customers.

The disruption is the second significant grid failure in less than a month. On 29 July, an outage struck Accra, Tema, Kasoa and sections of the Ashanti and Eastern regions.

Akosombo Explosion Still Disrupting the Grid

The current instability has its origins in the 23 April explosion at the Akosombo substation, which destroyed the facility's switchyard and halted operations at the Akosombo Dam, removing roughly 1,000 megawatts of electricity from the national grid.

Engineers later bypassed the damaged infrastructure to resume partial generation, and it is that provisional arrangement that Jinapor described as the source of the ongoing grid fragility.

3News reported that the minister said a permanent control centre is expected to be operational next month, a development he indicated would substantially improve the reliability of power supply across the country. He added that restoration work was already under way in areas experiencing outages.

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Two Major outages in less than a month

Thursday's disruption is the second significant failure to strike Ghana's national grid within 30 days.

On July 29, 2026, a similar widespread blackout affected communities in Accra, Tema, Kasoa, and parts of the Ashanti and Eastern regions.

The back-to-back incidents are expected to intensify scrutiny over the reliability of Ghana's transmission infrastructure, particularly given the impact such outages have on households, commercial operations and critical services across the country.

Source: YEN.com.gh