The Africa Sustainable Energy Centre (ASEC) has called on the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) to publish a comprehensive technical report on the recent widespread power outages and system disturbances recorded across parts of Ghana.

According to ASEC, while GRIDCo has attributed the latest disturbance to a fault on the Akosombo-Volta transmission line, which triggered the automatic tripping of generating units and other power system protection mechanisms, the restoration of electricity should not be the end of the response.

In a statement issued on Friday, August 21, ASEC said the public deserves a clear explanation of what caused the incident, how the power system responded, and what measures are being taken to prevent similar occurrences.

The statement signed by ASEC Executive Director, Ing. Justice Ohene-Akoto, is therefore urging GRIDCo to make the findings of its ongoing technical investigation available to the public.

ASEC said the report should establish the immediate, underlying and systemic causes of the disturbance and distinguish between the initiating fault, subsequent equipment trips, cascading events and any weaknesses that may have amplified the impact.

It also wants GRIDCo to assess the performance of its protection systems during the incident, including whether they operated as designed, whether there were delayed or unexpected trips, and whether coordination between the various protection systems was adequate.

ASEC further wants GRIDCo to document lessons from the incident and identify what could have been done differently to limit the scale and duration of the outage. The organisation is also calling for specific corrective and preventive measures, including upgrades to transmission infrastructure, protection systems, monitoring and control systems, maintenance practices and operational procedures.

ASEC believes Ghana must place greater emphasis on the resilience and redundancy of the national electricity grid rather than focusing primarily on restoring power after failures. It wants GRIDCo to demonstrate the level of redundancy available on critical transmission corridors and whether alternative supply routes can prevent a single fault from developing into a widespread system disturbance.

The organisation has also called for a robust recovery and rollback plan that can be activated in the event of a similar incident. Such a plan, it said, should clearly define restoration procedures, operational decision points, responsibilities and communication protocols to ensure electricity supply is restored safely and efficiently.

“Ghana does not only need power restored after an outage. We need a grid that is resilient enough to prevent a disturbance from becoming a crisis in the first place,” the statement concluded.

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