The Africa Center for Energy policy (ACEP) is demanding for the immediate suspension of plans to bring in another 225 megawatts Karpowership before the end of the first half of the year.

After three earlier failed timelines last year , the first powership arrived in Ghana on November 28 and is currently adding 225 MW to the national grid helping stabilize power supply to various homes and industries.

According to the energy policy think tank position on the state of the power sector of Ghana, “Government should take steps to abrogate all emergency power contracts who have not fulfilled their agreements relative to timelines “.

Alternatively, ACEP is demanding government re-negotiates or converts these emergency power solutions to the traditional IPP projects to reduce the high cost associated with emergency power deployment.

The Director of Operations and Resource Mobilization at ACEP Ben Boakye said , these moves will help safeguard Ghanaian consumers from any further adjustments in tariffs resulting from capacity charges.

“In July 2015, we said that emergency power was very expensive; and predicted that tariffs were going to be increased by 60%. We were right. The PURC increased tariffs for electricity by 60%, he charged.

By June 2015 the following short term and emergency solutions were lined up:

All these proposed plants (totalling 1800MW) had expected delivery period of between 3- 6 months from July 2015.

Seven (7) months on, ACEP says ,” the addition to the Grid stand at 585MW consisting of 225MW Karpower ship, 250MW Ameri plant and 110MW Tico Expansion”.