By Deborah Asantewaah SARFO
To prevent the looming power crisis expected to hit the country, Executive Director-Eureka Energy Solutions, Dr. Yussif Sulemana, has advised the new administration to set up an emergency fund to provide needed resources to manage power outages in the country.
While describing this action as a short-term approach to address challenges in the power sector, he maintained that it will result in the availability of funds which would ensure that at any point in time the country does not run out of fuel.
“We have to set up an emergency fund to ensure that we have available fuel supply. In this case, fuel to the power plants will always be available,” he noted.
His call for an emergency fund comes after some concerns raised by Energy Minister-designate John Jinapor about the country possibly experiencing pockets of power outages – “dumsor” – in the coming days.
Touching on what he described as a medium-long-term approach, the energy expert proposed deliberate investments in gas infrastructure to maximise the country’s gas reserves. This includes piping gas to processing plants, increasing gas capacity and utilising it for power generation.
Dr. Sulemana further explained that having another gas plant will help serve two purposes – “help feed the power industry and unlock some oil untapped due to gas off-take issues”.
According to him, failure to invest in gas infrastructure over the years has left the country heavily reliant on liquid-based fuel for power generation. He said this is ‘unfortunate’ considering how the country is endowed with gas reserves.
Meanwhile, for the long-term he underscored a need to diversify the country’s power generation portfolio to include more renewables.
“We need to make concerted efforts to diversify our generation portfolios to encapsulate renewables. I think we have huge potential, especially in solar.”
Meanwhile, the West African Gas Pipeline Company (WAPCo) has postponed its scheduled pipeline maintenance by two weeks – bringing some relief to citizens and resulting in a temporary solution to the power crisis.
This decision by WAPCo was triggered by intense negotiations with a technical team established by the Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah, to lead the charge in resolving the power crisis.
Dr. Sulemana noted that despite numerous conversations to leverage solar for power generation, the country’s solar penetration is barely two percent.
To increase the country’s solar penetration, he urged government to create an enabling environment for the sector by offering some tax waivers or incentives for the solar mix – especially for inverters and batteries.
While incentives are readily available for the importation of solar panels, Dr. Sulemana encouraged government to consider solar inverters and batteries as well because they are quite expensive and contribute heavily to the power produced by solar.
