About 1.2 million households in Ghana do not have access to electricity, according to the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP).
Although the country has achieved an enviable 85.3 percentage access rate as of 2021, the highest electricity access rate in Sub-Saharan Africa, the figure of households without electricity, it said, remained high and could be a setback against the country’s target of attaining universal access by 2025.
Speaking at a media briefing to announce the relaunch of ACEP’s electricity monitoring platform to support the energy sector, the policy lead, Climate Change and Energy Transition, ACEP, Charles Ofori, said the disparity was from the rural areas, as the urban areas had achieved 100 per cent access rate.
The government, he said, must continue to pay attention to renewable energy to increase capacity to expand services to those areas
Power generation
He said the lack of access to electricity could be mitigated by allowing a lot of investment in the renewable system like mini-grids and micro grid system that are not necessarily connected to the grid to be replaced in some of these communities to help in power generation
Ofori mentioned that private sector participation in the system would help provide access to the communities that were hard to connect to the main grid for electricity generation
He stated that with tariff-related issues, the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) could help provide reasonable tariffs that the consumers would be willing to pay to access and enjoy electricity in the hard-pressed areas and achieve its target by the end of 2025.
Platform
The monitor seeks to educate consumers and energy providers on power
sector-related issues and enable them to receive feedback on the performance of electricity in the specific localities.
With education, the platform provides information on power generation capacity, power installed capacity, losses of the commercial, technical and the transmission losses that are being made, the monitor has features such as generation, electricity access rate, distribution improvement of the southern zone, energy efficiency and regulation, and provides platforms to send feedback and complaints on various issues, power outages, meter issues, other technical issues that may be occurring within some localities and what they are experiencing, among other issues.
The brain behind the platform, Derrick Amegatse, who took the media through the features of the monitor and how to access it said it would be an effective responsive system and educational tool for consumers on
energy- related issues
Amegatse, who also is the Communications Officer for ACEP, disclosed that data provided on the platform was sourced from government- sanctioned energy sector institutions like the energy commission, PURC and utility companies and was consolidated to provide for the platform.
Key complaints that have been received from the consumers using the platform are on power fluctuation in their communities and meter issues which they have applied for but have not been served yet.