“Energy Crisis Looms”
Let me be clear – this is not my prediction for or comment on Ghana. Rather it is the front page headline that ran in Thursday’s Daily Graphic, one of Ghana’s most popular and country-wide newspapers.
According to the Daily Graphic article, the ability of the Volta River Authority (“VRA”) to generate hydro-electricity is in “serious crisis” because of a failure by a number of companies and ministries, departments and agencies to pay the VRA what they owe it. In addition, the VRA says that the cost of producing the hydro-electricity is greater than the revenues it obtains from selling it, and so they’re seeking a tariff adjustment. A spokesperson for the VRA estimated the loss to be 50% of its production cost. Other contributing factors to the problem were inflation and rising crude oil prices. However, the fact that a spokesperson for the VRA was willing to go on the record does provide, I think, some indication of how seriously the VRA views the situation. Only time will tell.
Anecdotally, I had been told that power rationing often occurs at this time of year, and has been occurring, and I have experienced it first-hand on my visit. I was visiting a friend, here in Accra, when the power was rationed to that neighbourhood. The solution: a large diesel generator to power all the air conditioning units, fridges, freezers and lighting until the grid came back online in that neighbourhood. And these generators are powerful – 20 KVa. To those of you that are technically minded that will mean a lot more to you than me! However, these units come at a cost, which can run into the thousands of U.S. dollars, and probably the equivalent to a family saloon car. For those that can’t afford such luxuries, torches, solar lanterns, candles and kerosene lamps are used as alternative lighting sources. So regular are such events, that households can actually have special lights, connected to the grid line that runs outside their homes, to indicate when the grid power is on or off, regardless of the time of day.
While the grid is used by households to power electrical appliances and lighting, people typically use liquefied petroleum gas (“LPG”) for cooking. Electric ovens are available, and are used, but because of the relative high cost of electricity, it is seldom the first choice of cooking energy. When LPG cannot be sourced, or if people cannot afford to purchase it, charcoal cookstoves are often used (LPG is usually the same or lower cost, but charcoal can be bought in small quantities if required, whereas LPG is bought in canisters of various sizes, typical to the ones North Americans use for barbeques). Unfortunately, the supply of LPG has been an issue over the last six months when I’ve visited Ghana, with many distribution stations out altogether, leading to a lengthy search process for people trying to fill up their canisters.
Such issues likely take a toll on the Ghanaian economy. However, the one energy that Ghana will never run out of is the human kind. Regardless of what issues they face, the people, some of whom I’m fortunate to call my friends, continue with their everyday tasks throughout, employing the necessary contingencies available to them to mitigate such rationing.
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This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 11:51 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.