Providing Permanent Solutions to Temporal Problems: the Case of Ghana’s Electricity Crisis

The Energy Crisis in Ghana persisted over the last 15years from 2000 till 2015, indicating the level at which the problem impacted the economy and the fact that the problem has attracted the concerns of every Ghanaian. Energy has become a necessity and a requirement to sustain living in Ghana and deserve all the priority needed.
Governments over the past 15years have failed to systematically solve the energy crisis in Ghana and there have been several attempts by all the sectors of the energy industry to solve the problem but with time one would realize these institutions are only providing temporal solutions to a permanent problem instead of providing permanent solutions to temporal problems.
Ghana being endow with a lot of energy resources ranging from hydro, solar, wind, gas, crude, nuclear and human capital one would still wonder why would Ghana still experience even an hour electricity outage? Better still Ghana is plaque with endless electricity outages day after day. The question then is what is the problem with Ghana's energy systems? The solutions are entrenched in the, Generation, Transmission, Distribution, Market and Regulation of the electricity production chain.

Lets diagnose the problems first starting with Generation, Ghana still relies heavily on hydroelectricity since this is abundantly available and relatively cheap once in operation; meaning that all things being equal hydroelectricity should be the first option to be harness when available because it can provide base-load capacity continuously without much interruptions except that lack of rainwater or oversupply of the rainwater can cause damages to the dams. In short hydro dams are subject to the risk of nature but if properly managed especially creating several tributaries to join the dams or providing outlets for the water to flow out of the dams during floods.
However a permanent solution is not to depend completely on hydro generation but diversify Ghana's generation sources of which to that effect Ghana is adding Thermal plants to take care of the fluctuations from the hydro dam.

Even with the issue of complete dependence on hydro, Ghana is not harnessing the full hydro potentials to our advantage. The case of Norway which produces about 100% of their electricity from hydro do not experience outages as we do in Ghana. Probably Ghana needs to learn some lessons from the pacesetters.

The thermal plants are supposed to supplement the hydro generation especially during peak demand periods where electricity consumption is very high and volatile. However the Issue of Locational Marginal Prices come into the scene where the last thermal plant to be switch on would set electricity prices to be paid which if not managed can cause system failures. In all thermal generation is very expansive because crude oil or gas are the main sources of fuel to run the plants and crude oil or gas are bought from the local or international markets which are subject to price fluctuations and volatility. Crude oil as known has exhibited stochastic behaviors and has proven to be the most volatile commodity in the world because of the complexity and its high global demand. Notwithstanding crude oil buyers can systematically and intellectually manage the risk or hedge their exposure to this complex infinite commodity produced from mostly politically unstable locations, through a process called HEDGING or CRUDE OIL RISK MANAGEMENT. Crude oil buyers in this case Ghana i.e generating companies, need to develop a hedging policy to help control the risk of buying crude oil from the international markets.

Using gas to generate electricity has been known to be the cheapest, benign or environmentally sustainable and most importantly can provide a permanent alternative to crude oil in meeting peak demand of electricity because of its ability to be switch on and off without any delay times. Interestingly Ghana has abundant gas resources yet we spent a lot of capital on the importation of light crude oil which is very expensive, thus solving permanent problems with temporal solutions. Instead of developing and making use of the abundant gas resources to meet Ghana's electricity generation requirements. The government of Ghana is however making efforts to use the gas from the Jubilee Field to power some thermal plants which is in the right direction but much could have been done.

Ghana has abundant solar energy but how much of that can be harness? with limited availability of technology, very expensive to setup and operational cost, limited life spans for PV technology of about 20years, and subject to the risk of nature which is not dependable and cannot generate enough capacity. Solar in Ghana can however be use to power street lights, traffic lights and remote communities which cannot be connected to the national grid because of distance and the issues of transmission losses and cost. Not until much technology is invested into solar energy in Ghana much cannot be said about its ability to generate enough electricity capacity. Just like wind energy Ghana still lacks the capacity to tab solar energy potentials, however Ghana can learn from Germany and Denmark for solar and wind technologies respectively

Nuclear Energy which sparks a lot of views, debates and arguments in Ghana recently should not be overlooked if Ghana wants permanent solutions to the energy crisis. France generates about 78% of their electricity from nuclear, USA, UK and many others still generate substantial amounts of their electricity from nuclear. God loves Ghana, because according to some research Ghana has a lot of Uranium resources which is the raw material for nuclear energy production, meaning just like hydro, nuclear could also be used to generate base-load electricity capacity, with cheap operational cost after the setup, environmentally benign and has a long usage span nuclear energy has the potential of solving all Ghana's energy crisis permanently, only if the nuclear waste materials are properly managed. In recent times there have been drastic improvement in nuclear reactors meaning that even nuclear waste is not more an issue for the industry and the Fault-Tree Analysis of a nuclear power plant is known to employ the best innovations the world has ever seen, not even earthquakes can cause any damages. After the experiences from Chernobyl of Russia, Fukushima of Japan and Three Mile Island of USA. However Ghana is an earthquake neutral zone so therefore no any risk of explosions, Ghana needs to just recognized the need and the advantages nuclear brings and take advantage of the numerous benefits.

The biggest problem in Ghana's energy institutions and their inability to solve the energy crisis is with management: lack of knowledge, capacity, lack of a clear energy policy for the nation void of political interruptions, corruption and putting square pigs in round holes, uncoordinated activities between the energy ministry, PURC, VRA, ECG, GRIDCo, Energy efficiency foundation, Energy Commission and many more. All the institutions should draw up an energy road map for the country and alien the temporal and permanent energy needs of the country into the plan.

In conclusion Dr. Kwame Nkrumah once said, to free ourselves from Imperialism and neocolonialism the Ghanaian must take up the responsibilities and challenges of their future and fashion their future for their benefits. And that Ghana is capable of managing our own affairs. Ghana, let’s take up the responsibility of managing and fashioning our future energy needs and permanently solving our energy crisis.


SHAFIC SULEMAN (ERP) ( All errors and mistakes, are solely my responsibility)
Student at DMU
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