The Director of the Africa Sustainable Energy Centre, Justice Ohene-Akoto, has accused the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo) of failing to provide sufficient information about the causes of recurring power outages in the country.

Mr Ohene-Akoto is calling for greater transparency from the power transmission company, particularly following another widespread outage that affected several parts of Ghana on Thursday, August 20, 2026.

GRIDCo attributed the latest outage to a major fault on the Akosombo–Volta transmission line, which triggered the automatic shutdown of the Akosombo generating units and some thermal plants.

However, speaking on Channel One Newsroom, Mr Ohene-Akoto questioned whether the explanation fully accounted for the repeated failures within the national power system.

“We think GRIDCo is not telling us something. We think GRIDCo should be more transparent on exactly what some of these things are happening,” he said.

According to him, the latest incident appeared to be connected to frequency problems within the national grid, an issue he believes has contributed to previous system failures.

Mr Ohene-Akoto recalled raising concerns about frequency during an earlier total system collapse but said GRIDCo attributed that incident to lightning.

“I came out saying it’s likely an issue of frequency, I mean, of a frequency that was out of range, that we had a total failure. GRIDCo came out and said it’s a result of lightning, which I have my reservations about. I believe GRIDCo was not telling us something,” he said.

He said recent comments by the Energy Minister about frequency-related challenges had reinforced his concerns about GRIDCo’s previous explanations.

“Now, on this issue, the Minister came out and said frequency, which I agree with him,” he said.

Mr Ohene-Akoto said GRIDCo should conduct and publish comprehensive root-cause analyses after every major system failure, including the lessons learned and measures being implemented to prevent a recurrence.

“If they came out to give us a comprehensive root cause analysis and a comprehensive roadmap, we’d have held them accountable with this one,” he said.

He also questioned whether plans to construct a new ultra-modern control centre would resolve the underlying technical problems affecting Ghana’s power system.

“An example is the fire, I mean, the substation that caught fire. That should have been something that should never have happened. And I’ve seen the Minister saying, ‘We are going to build an ultra-modern control centre.’ If the underlying issue were not resolved, we are going to burn the control centre as well,” he said.

Mr Ohene-Akoto urged GRIDCo to publish detailed troubleshooting reports, lessons learned and a clear roadmap for preventing future system failures.

He said providing such information would enable stakeholders to assess whether the measures being implemented are addressing the root causes of Ghana’s recurring power outages rather than merely responding to individual incidents.

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