Kumasi faces three months of planned power outages as GRIDCo upgrades transmission line

Residents and businesses in Kumasi should expect temporary power outages over the next three months as the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo), in partnership with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), upgrades the Kumasi-Anwomaso transmission line, Energy and Green Transition Minister Dr John Abdulai Jinapor said on Thursday.

The project, scheduled to begin on Monday (20 July) will increase the transmission line’s capacity from 364 megawatts to 1,000 megawatts, nearly tripling the amount of electricity that can be delivered to Ghana’s second-largest city.

Speaking during an inspection of the project site, Jinapor said the upgrade was essential to meet Kumasi’s growing electricity demand and prevent future failures of the power network.

“If we don’t do this improvement, we could collapse the entire grid,” he told journalists.

He said the transmission line has been in service for more than 30 years and can no longer adequately support rising residential and industrial demand, particularly with new power generation facilities supplying Kumasi.

Jinapor explained that authorities had initially planned to construct a new transmission line alongside the existing one, but decades of encroachment on GRIDCo’s right-of-way had made that impossible.

“Unfortunately, over the years there’s been a lot of encroachment on GRIDCo’s right of way,” he said. “The normal situation is that under transmission lines there ought not to be any construction, but unfortunately there has been construction over the years.”

Rather than demolishing homes and paying substantial compensation, engineers will dismantle the existing transmission line and erect a new one along the same corridor.

He said postponing the project was no longer an option.

“We cannot postpone that forever,” Jinapor said. “Most of these works should have been done years ago, but we can’t keep postponing them.”

The minister said the project was originally expected to take six months but had been shortened to three months after additional work crews were deployed.

“I directed that we compress the work and use different shifts and multiple gangs so that we can accelerate the pace of work,” he said.

During construction, some communities will experience planned daytime outages while work is underway, with electricity expected to be restored in the evenings.

Authorities said affected areas would receive advance notice before power is interrupted.
Jinapor said the ministry was seeking to minimise disruptions to businesses and households.

“The objective is to ensure that we do not disrupt business activity for a long time,” he said, urging residents to “bear with us” during the temporary inconvenience.

He noted that recent improvement works by ECG had already enhanced electricity supply in Kumasi, adding that the latest upgrade would provide sufficient transmission capacity for many years.

Contractor China Water Engineering has deployed multiple teams to the site. Of the 60 transmission towers required, 56 have already been completed, leaving four outstanding.

GRIDCo is also using the construction period to upgrade transformers at the Ahodwo substation, which supplies electricity to Kumasi’s central business district and surrounding residential communities.

GRIDCo Chief Executive Frank Otchere said the expansion of the transmission line must be matched by increased transformer capacity to ensure the upgraded network can operate efficiently.

Source: Asaase Radio/ Jonathan Ofori