Ghana’s energy mix is expected to increase by 400MW of power following Early Power Deal that was passed by parliament in August 2016. The project is expected to come on stream in the next six month.
The country is currently experiencing an excruciating power crisis that has crippled businesses. But, the passage of the Early Power deal comes as a relief to citizens who are yearning for an improvement in their power supply.
The power deal approval will go a long way to stabilize the country’s energy shortfall. The power deal has agreement is between the government of Ghana, Sage Petroleum Limited, General Energy Investments, Quantum Gas Terminals, ECG and Endeavor and EPL Holdings.
According to the power agreement Early Power Limited, will be responsible, development, operation, ownership and management of the combined cycle gas turbine power plant. Conferring to the African Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), the project will have a positive impact in the short to medium term.
However, ACEP is optimistic that, the power deal will have a positive impact in Ghana in both the short and long term. The initial 144MW in 6 months will help meet the near term shortages and offer ECG certain flexibility.
Its first stage includes five gas turbine units of 28.5MW each that can operate independently and which can be started, stopped and then restarted all within one hour. This will allow ECG to more efficiently dispatch to match the actual power demand in the country.
Moreover, the construction of LPG import and storage infrastructure is expected to increases Ghana’s fuel diversity and security.
Still, the project will provide a flexible arrangement such that ECG will not have to escrow funds to raise a letter of credit for default bill payments as required under most recent PPAs, instead sponsoring the financial guarantee against debt repayment.