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Dr. Kwabena Donkor, Minister of Power, has reiterated that the power sector is undergoing restructuring in a bid to respond quickly and proactively to the changing landscape of customer demand and satisfaction.

To this end, he said a committee to advise him on to restructuring of the nation’s lead generation entity, the Volta River Authority (VRA), would be submitting its report by the end of this month.
Again, he said the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) Private Sector Participation is being structured with the assistance of the US Compact.

The Grid Company of Ghana (Gridco), he said, is examining its internal processes with the aim of improving performance, whiles the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NedCO), is also slated for customer focused reforms.

Dr. Donkor was speaking at the opening of the ‘Powering Africa: Ghana’ Investment Summit held yesterday in Accra.

The two-day meeting, organized by EnergyNet Limited, serves as a platform to ensure that the private sector is provided with opportunities to engage with Ghana’s public sector leaders to accelerate the development of the power sector.

With measurable progress made towards ending load-shedding by the end of December 2015, Ghana is moving towards its goal to be a regional hub for power distribution in West Africa.

Some of the topics to be discussed include “Unlocking Ghana’s Power Potential, Establishing Ghana as a Regional Hub for Power Distribution, Driving Generation Capacity through Capital Access and Exploring Renewable and Alternative Energy Generation.”

The organizers are hopeful that, at the end, the summit will address questions, such as the opportunities for international investors to participate in the sector, what will the energy mix look like? How to prioritize renewable and gas opportunities; how attractive are the current tariffs for attracting long-term investment and what is the outlook of the tariff regime in the short-to-medium-term and is this likely to change?

Dr. Donkor mentioned numerous ongoing projects in the short term, which is aimed at ending the current power crisis.

He stated that in line with the government’s promise to ensure that the current load shedding does not recur in the foreseeable future, the state is creating the enabling environment to enable both State and non-State actors (IPPs) to add substantial capacity to the adequately redundancy as required under international best practice.

“Government is also conscious of the need to address the trilemma of energy management, that is, availability of supply, affordability of supply and security of supply and will not relent in this effort,” he stressed.

Dr. Donkor outline that his ministry is encouraging both conventional and non-conventional forms of generation by encouraging new gas fired plants, biomass fuelled plants, solar and wind farms, tidal powered generation as well as clean Coal fuelled generation.

“The additional generation is being backed by a robust expansion transmission and distribution capacity, 330KV and 16KV transmission lines are being expanded at an unprecedented pace across the country to enable evacuation of new generation capacity and to enhance exports to our neighborhood,” he added.