Energy Ministry: GRIDCO’s Akosombo substation rebuild to take months

The Ministry of Energy has indicated that it will take several months to fully rebuild the damaged Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) Akosombo Substation, following the devastating fire that destroyed critical components of the facility.

The substation, a key installation in Ghana’s electricity transmission network, was engulfed by flames on April 23, causing significant disruption to power supply across the country.

The incident has since raised serious concerns about the resilience of Ghana’s energy infrastructure and the time required to restore full operations.

Providing an update on the situation, the Energy Ministry’s spokesperson, Richmond Rockson, explained that the extent of destruction at the site is severe, particularly in relation to the control systems that manage the distribution of power from the Akosombo Dam.

Speaking in an interview with Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show on Monday, April 27, Richmond stressed that reconstruction efforts will not be a quick process, given the scale of damage to the facility’s core infrastructure.

“The whole control room has to be rebuilt and it will not take a day or two, it will take a number of months to be able to do that and so what needs to be immediately done is finding ways to restore power and restore our lives back to normalcy.”

He added that in the interim, authorities are focusing on contingency plans to mitigate the impact of the outage, including rerouting power and exploring alternative generation sources where possible.

The prolonged timeline for reconstruction is likely to have broader implications for economic activity, particularly for sectors that depend heavily on reliable electricity.

CitiNewsRoom