The Ministry of Energy and Green Transition has urged the public to remain patient as engineers work to restore electricity following a major power system disturbance, warning that rushing the restoration process could jeopardise the stability of the national grid.
The caution comes after the Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) announced that the National Interconnected Transmission System experienced a major disturbance at about 3:11 a.m. on Wednesday, July 29, causing several power generation plants to trip and disrupting electricity supply to parts of the country.
Speaking in a interview, the spokesperson for the Minister for Energy and Green Transition, Richmond Rockson, said engineers are working around the clock to restore power but emphasised that the process must be carried out carefully to avoid triggering a more serious system failure.
He explained that electricity has already been restored to a number of affected areas, while restoration efforts continue in communities that are still without power.
According to Mr. Rockson, restoring electricity after a major system disturbance is a highly technical exercise that requires strict adherence to safety protocols.
He stressed that prioritising speed over safety could increase the risk of a complete nationwide grid collapse, making the situation far worse than the current outage.
“Power restoration is a process, a very technical process.
We are very conscious when it comes to the attempt to restore power because we do not want to compromise the safety of the power infrastructure,” he said.
He added that the restoration is being undertaken in phases to ensure the integrity of the power network.
“If you are not careful and you compromise safety with speed, you can create a bigger problem than what the problem is now,” Mr. Rockson noted.
He further explained that electricity passes through several stages—from generation to transmission lines, bulk supply points and substations—before reaching consumers, meaning a fault at any point in the chain can disrupt supply to homes and businesses.
While assuring customers that engineers are making steady progress, Mr. Rockson said it was not possible to provide a definite timeline for the full restoration of electricity to all affected areas.
Meanwhile, GRIDCo has activated its emergency restoration procedures and has begun investigations to determine the cause of the system disturbance that triggered the nationwide outages.
