A fire outbreak at a substation linked to the Akosombo Dam has led to the loss of about 1,000 megawatts from Ghana’s national electricity supply, according to the Ministry of Energy and Green Transition.
The Ministry’s Head of Communications, Richmond Rockson, said the shutdown has significantly impacted power generation, noting that Akosombo typically contributes around 1,000MW out of the country’s peak demand of about 4,400MW.
He explained that the situation has exposed limited reserve capacity within the power system, which has made it difficult to cushion the impact of the outage. According to him, an efficient system should maintain about 20 percent reserve margin to handle such emergencies.
Despite the setback, Mr. Rockson assured that efforts are underway to stabilise supply, including plans to add about 1,200MW of new generation capacity and an additional 200MW of solar power with battery storage. He added that further projects are being pursued to strengthen resilience in the sector.
He also clarified that gas supply remains stable, stating that operations at the Atuabo gas facility have been restored after a minor technical fault and are continuing without disruption.
While acknowledging the scale of the challenge, Mr. Rockson expressed confidence that engineers are working to restore normal power supply as quickly as possible.