The Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has cited late notice from the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) for its inability to execute all requests for load management.
According to the power distribution company, it requires a prior notice of between 3 to 4 hours in order to comply with such requests.
“It is …on record that the requests from GRIDCo for ECG to drop load are mostly received within 30 minutes to an hour prior to GRIDCo disconnecting ECG’s feeders at the BSPs. This short duration does not give ECG adequate time to plan, prepare and implement this request and more importantly inform customers about the load management request from GRIDCo.
It is important that such requests for load management from GRIDCo are received between 3-4 hours prior to the peak or off-peak periods. This will afford us the opportunity to plan and execute the load management in such a manner that customers are not unduly affected,” the Managing Director of the ECG, Samuel Dubik Mahama wrote in a letter dated April 5, addressed to the Minister of Energy.
The letter is in response to an earlier one written to the Energy Minister by GRIDCo complaining about ECG’s noncompliance with load management requests it issues.
However, Mr Mahama in his letter explained, “For example, customers who may have previously suffered outages due to ECG’s internal faults or planned maintenance works should not suffer a double jeopardy with another outage from a load management request from GRIDCo or due to the operation of their Automatic Frequency Load Shedding (AFLS) relays installed at the BSPs. It is the planning and management of such incidents that makes it imperative for ECG to be informed well in advance about any requests for load management by GRIDCo.”
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The ECG MD further noted that, “It worthy to note that, between January and March 2024, sixty-four (64No.) requests were received from GRIDCo for load management. Out of this, forty (40No.) were for peak periods (18:00 24:00 hrs) and twenty-four (24No.) for off-peak (06:00 — 18:00 hrs) load management. Out of the forty (40no.) peak load requests, thirty-five (35No.) (88%) of them were received within an hour to the peak period. There were only five (5No) (12%) instances where ECG received the request within 2-3 hours of the peak period.
Out of the Twenty-Four (24No.) off-peak load requests, three (3No) (13%) of them were received within 30 minutes to the off-peak period while the remaining Twenty-One (2INo.) (87%) instances were received far into the off-peak period. 3. For January and February 2024, ECG received seventeen (17No.) requests from GRIDCo to drop loads ranging from 80MW to 510MW. In addition, GRIDCo also disconnected feeders and BSPs. ECG’s compliance for this period was 100%.”
He added that “ECG’s reservation about the late receipt of instructions from GRIDCo on load management was tabled for discussion in a meeting involving ECG, GRIDCo and the Hon. Minister of Energy. At the said meeting, ECG requested that the notice for Load Management must be received latest by 3pm to enable ECG plan adequately.”